Worse than it seems? The 2008 financial crisis under macrofinancial lenses: the case of Mexico

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the credit market conditions and the exchange rate behaviour in Mexico during the 2008 financial crisis. Its objective is to elucidate whether observed macroeconomic fundamentals accurately reflect real economic conditions during this period of economic turbulence. Through a two-step econometric framework, "normal period" stock prices sensibilities to the nominal exchange rate and the short-term interest rate are employed to infer effective macroeconomic fundamentals: those aggregate economic variables that best explain the crosssectional behaviour of stock returns during periods of crisis. Both the observed and effective macroeconomic fundamentals are compared in order to assess whether observed time series match market’s expectations. Regarding the observed exchange rate, results show that during the pre-crisis and post-crisis subperiods it does not reflect market conditions since investors anticípate a much larger depreciation than the observed one. Regarding the observed short-term interest rate, results indicate that it accurately reflects the credit market conditions during the past financial crisis in Mexico.