October 12, 2017

Winner of Central Bank Award Rodrigo Gómez 2017

CEMLA’s Board of Governors decided to grant the 2017 Central Bank Award Rodrigo Gómez to Victoria Nuguer, research economist at Research Department, InterAmerican Development Bank, for her study entitled “Fed's Interest Rate Normalization: Does it Matter Who Borrows from Abroad in EME?”. In this research, to be published by CEMLA in English and Spanish, she builds a small open economy model with banks and exporting firms, to analyze the effect of an increase in the foreign interest rate, when natural non-hedged / hedged firms borrow from abroad. She proposes, based on her findings, a non-conventional policy in which the financial authority lends to non-hedged firms when foreign borrowing is more expensive, and shows that households are better-off with the policy than without it. This study was developed while Victoria Nuguer was research economist at Banco de México.

In addition, the Board of Governors thanks Rhys Mendes, Managing Director, Economic and Financial Research, Bank of Canada; Ángel Estrada, Coordinator of the Deputy Direction General for International Affairs, Banco de España; Isabel Horta Correia, Head of Economics and Research Department, Banco de Portugal; and Carlos Urrutia, Professor of Economics and Researcher for the Center for Economic Research at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, for their contribution, as members of the examining committee, to the success of this edition of the Award.