A License To Issue Anywhere

This paper overviews patterns in bond issuance in local and external markets by firms in six large Latin American countries. Data suggest that despite rising issuance, local markets remain small and shallow in several countries. Nevertheless, since greater funding is available to many firms in both markets, we investigate the factors that may explain the firm’s choice on where to issue a bond. Using an unbalanced panel of firm and market-level indicators for years 1995-2015, we control for variables representing several theories of capital structure, and the results show that firm characteristics such as size and liquidity increase the likelihood of firms to issue externally. With respect to market characteristics, the market completeness hypothesis generates the most support, where market scale and depth are most important for the issuer’s choice of the market, suggesting that local markets will have to become deeper to draw more firms and investment.

Includes articles on international business opportunities.

The world economy and global trade are experiencing a broad-based cyclical upswing. Since October 2017, global growth outcomes and the outlook for 2018–19 have improved across all regions, reinforced by the expected positive near-term spillovers from tax policy changes in the United States. Accommodative global financial conditions, despite some tightening and market volatility in early February 2018, have been providing support to economic recovery. Higher commodity prices are contributing to an improved outlook for commodity exporters. The US and Canadian economies posted solid gains in 2017 and are expected to grow above potential in the near term. Despite the improved near-term outlook, however, medium-term prospects are tilted downwards. Growth prospects for advanced economies are subdued and many emerging market and developing economies are projected to grow in per capita terms more slowly than advanced economies, raising concerns about income convergence. While risks appear broadly balanced in the near term, they skew to the downside over the medium term, including a possible sharp tightening of financial conditions, waning popular support for global economic integration, growing trade tensions and risks of a shift toward protectionist policies, and geopolitical strains.