Download Free Another Look At Exchange Rate And Monetary Regime Options For Latin America Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Another Look At Exchange Rate And Monetary Regime Options For Latin America and write the review.

We assess monetary regime options for Latin American countries. The costs of a common currency are likely to outweigh its benefits, as those countries face diverse economic shocks, do not trade much with each other, and are affected by common international financial shocks only to the same extent as the average pair of emerging markets. Unilateral dollarization would be desirable only for those countries where there are strong links to the U.S. economy, the credibility of the monetary authorities is irreversibly lost, and there is keen demand for dollar-denominated financial assets. Finally, some countries in the region seem to be good candidates for meaningful and useful floating.
This work grew out of a series of investigations begun by the authors in 1980 and 1981. Specifically the authors pursued two lines of inquiry. First, to advance the state of the theoretical lit erature to better explain the crises of liberalization which seemed to be afflicting the third world in general and Latin America in particular. To do this, several different kinds of models were in vestigated and adapted. These are presented in Chapters 2, 3 and 5. Secondly an analysis of the empirical evidence was conducted in order to gain insight into the processes that were thought to be occurring and the theoretical models that were being developed. Some of this work appears in Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. Other work by the authors on these issues has been published elsewhere and is referenced herein. There are a great many people whose work and whose com ments have influenced this work. We would like to especially thank Guillermo Calvo, Michael Connolly, Sebastian Edwards, Roque Fernandez, Michael Darby, Robert Clower, Neil Wallace, John Kareken, Paul McNelis, Jeffrey Nugent, Jaime Marquez, Lee Ohanian, Leroy Laney, Jorge Braga de Macedo, Dale Henderson, vii Matthew Canzoneiri, Arthur Laffer, Marc Miles, and George Von Furstenberg whose ideas and comments gave rise to much of our work. We would like to thank Suh Lee for his assistance with the computations in Chapter 5.
Foreign exchange intervention is widely used as a policy tool, particularly in emerging markets, but many facets of this tool remain limited, especially in the context of flexible exchange rate regimes. The Latin American experience can be informative because some of its largest countries adopted floating exchange rate regimes and inflation targeting while continuing to intervene in foreign exchange markets. This edited volume reviews detailed accounts from several Latin American countries’ central banks, and it provides insight into how and with what aim many interventions were decided and implemented. This book documents the effectiveness of intervention and pays special attention to the role of foreign exchange intervention policy within inflation-targeting monetary frameworks. The main lesson from Latin America’s foreign exchange interventions, in the context of inflation targeting, is that the region has had a considerable degree of success. Transparency and a clear communication policy have been key. For economies that are not highly dollarized, rules-based intervention helped contain financial instability and build international reserves while preserving inflation targets. The Latin American experience can help other countries in the design and implementation of their policies.
Instead of focusing the debate about the conduct of monetary policy on whether the nominal exchange rate should be fixed or flexible, the focus should be on whether the monetary policy regime appropriately constrains discretion in monetary policymaking. Three frameworks deserve serious discussion as possible long-run strategies for monetary policy in Latin America. A hard exchange-rate peg, monetary targeting, and inflation targeting.
Published in 1999, this work analyzes the phenomenon of macroeconomic adjustment, with special emphasis on selected Latin American countries facing stabilization programmes. It provides a historical description of the origins, functioning and collapse of exchange-rate regimes from the international classical gold standard period to modern arrangements. The author supports the argument that systemic asymmetries in the worldwide adjustment mechanism are inherent in the international monetary system. The recent theoretical literature dealing with the rules vs discretion debate and its interaction with the credibility issue is reviewed. This topic is intrinsically related to the dispute over the appropriate role of exchange-rate anchors in disinflation programmes. Against a background of academic dispute between advocates of exchange-rate prescriptions and monetary conceptions, the contrasting views of different theorists regarding the choice of exchange rate regimes are presented and assessed. Finally, a comparative analysis of recent experiments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico with exchange-rate based disinflation stabilization programmes is undertaken. The problems that have arisen while establishing new institutional arrangements, such as new currency or a policy rule for monetary base creation, are examined.
Most of the analysis of Latin American exchange rate problems and policies has concentrated on the economic side of things. This volume instead examines the politics of exchange rate management in four nations that had very different approaches and results. Although the Mexican peso crash, Brazil's currency crisis, Argentina's maintenance of a currency board, and Venezuelan policy responses to the shocks of 1997-98 have had major international financial ramifications, the origins and outcomes of these dramatic events have yet to be analyzed in a single volume. The contributors tie these policy episodes together using solid comparative analysis, in order to better inform the policy debate on these issues.
The politics surrounding exchange rate policies in the global economy The exchange rate is the most important price in any economy, since it affects all other prices. Exchange rates are set, either directly or indirectly, by government policy. Exchange rates are also central to the global economy, for they profoundly influence all international economic activity. Despite the critical role of exchange rate policy, there are few definitive explanations of why governments choose the currency policies they do. Filled with in-depth cases and examples, Currency Politics presents a comprehensive analysis of the politics surrounding exchange rates. Identifying the motivations for currency policy preferences on the part of industries seeking to influence politicians, Jeffry Frieden shows how each industry's characteristics—including its exposure to currency risk and the price effects of exchange rate movements—determine those preferences. Frieden evaluates the accuracy of his theoretical arguments in a variety of historical and geographical settings: he looks at the politics of the gold standard, particularly in the United States, and he examines the political economy of European monetary integration. He also analyzes the politics of Latin American currency policy over the past forty years, and focuses on the daunting currency crises that have frequently debilitated Latin American nations, including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. With an ambitious mix of narrative and statistical investigation, Currency Politics clarifies the political and economic determinants of exchange rate policies.
First Published in 1990 Economic Policy Alternatives for the Latin American Crisis aims to explore macroeconomic policy alternatives available to Latin American policymakers from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. Three decades of sustained growth and dramatic gains in levels of economic development in Latin America ended in the 1980s. Latin American countries found themselves plagued by foreign debts, high real interest rates, accelerated inflation, increasing poverty with malnutrition and high unemployment. This book presents a quantitative framework in which to evaluate the effectiveness of various types of monetary and fiscal policies under the conditions of inflation, declining growth, and debt. A macroeconomic policy model is constructed and using data from Ecuador the model is estimated empirically. The results of these simulations suggest some promising policy options to replace the current policy. This book is an interesting read for scholars and researchers of Latin American economics, macroeconomics and development economics.