¡EL FINANCIAL TIMES PUBLICA MI CARTA!

AM | @agumack

Me encanta el Financial Times. No me lo pierdo un solo día—ni el fin de semana. Y ahora me gusta más todavía: hoy publican una carta mía sobre el vínculo entre tasas de interés y corrupción. Es un comentario a la carta de Paul Temperton (16 de marzo) sobre la crisis económica en Brasil. El Sr. Temperton piensa que Brasil tuvo "mala suerte", y que se equivocó con su política de altas tasas. Éste es mi comentario:

Sir, the picture that emerges from Paul Temperton's comments on Brazil is that the country is a victim of a terms of trade shock aggravated by policy errors (Letters, March 16). Thus corruption plays no major role in his analysis. But what if Brazil's high interest rates were, precisely, a reflection of its less than robust system of checks and balances? A decade ago, an IMF study calculated that if Brazil had Denmark's governance indicators, the size of its credit market would increase by roughly 50 per cent.

The link between long-term interest rates and the quality of the judiciary and other institutions -ditched by economists since the start of the 19th century- was well understood by the likes of Bernier, Montesquieu, Galiani, Smith, Raynal and Necker. The key to their analysis is the supply of credit. An excess of political power leads to heightened policy risk and insecure property rights, and therefore to a contraction in credit supply. Thus corruption and high interest rates are two sides of the same coin (*).

Agustin Mackinlay
Professor of Finance,
European University,
Barcelona, Spain 
 
(*) Financial Times, 18 de marzo de 2016.
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