From the early 1990s until 1998, Argentina liberalised its banking system as part of a strategy to enter a globalised economy. The subsequent monetary policies, combined with ‘convertibilidad’ and an elevated government debt, led to a loss of confidence in the financial system, ending in the deep recession of 1998–2002. A sovereign debt default of $100 billion in December 2001 followed, and in January 2002 the fixed exchange regime was officially abandoned. This paper examines how firm-specific characteristics and the […]