Guatemala: Selected Issues
IMF Staff Country Reports, August 5, 2024
Source details
- Canonical URL
- Guatemala: Selected Issues
Other formats
Bibliographic details
- Published: August 5, 2024
- Series: IMF Staff Country Reports
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400287459.002
Overview and objective
- Explores effects of social unrest in Guatemala.
- Period analyzed: 2001 to 2023.
- Measure of social unrest used: monthly Reported Social Unrest Index.
Methodology
- Empirical model estimated on monthly data to identify effects of unrest episodes at higher frequencies than many cross-country studies.
- Controls: an extensive set, including controls for future social unrest shocks autocorrelations.
Key findings and statistics
- Estimations suggest no effects of social unrest episodes on the main external sector variables.
- Empirical evidence suggests little to no impact of social unrest in Guatemala.
- Contrary to Hadzi-Vaskov et al. (2023), effects on the real, monetary, financial, and external sectors are characterized as mild, limited, and temporary if not negligible.
- Results suggest that Guatemala is resilient to unrest shocks at business-cycle frequencies, even of considerable magnitude.
- Results are robust to different specifications.
Robustness and limitations
- Strength: exploiting monthly data allows disentangling unrest episode effects at higher frequencies.
- Limitation: lack of cross-country dimensionality in the analysis.
Content in this bundle
- Guatemala: Selected Issues; IMF Country Report No. 24/267; July 8, 2024