EXCHANGE-RATE POLICIES FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? WHAT DO WE STILL NOT KNOW?

The 1997–1998 Asian crisis, with its offshoots in Eastern Europe and Latin America, has reignited the debate about appropriate exchange-rate policies for developing countries. One widely shared conclusion from this episode is that adjustable or crawling pegs are extremely fragile in a world of volatile capital movements. The pressure resulting from massive capital flow reversals and weakened domestic financial systems was too strong even for countries that followed sound macroeconomic policies and had large stocks of reserves. As a consequence, the polar regimes of a "hard pegs" (such as a currency board), or a clean float, are enjoying new popularity. This paper argues that, while currency boards or even dollarization may be justified in some extreme cases, they are not appropriate for all developing countries. The recommendations formulated on the basis of the Mundell-McKinnon criteria for the optimum currency are considered still sensible today. Currency boards face serious implementation problems. One is the choice of the currency to peg to and at what rate; another is the need to ensure stability of the domestic financial system in the absence of a domestic lender of last resort. Floating appears to have wider applicability. As Friedman already argued in the early 1950s,if prices move slowly, it is both faster and less costly to move the nominal exchange rate in response to a shock that requires an adjustment in the real exchange rate. But for exchange-rate flexibility to be stabilizing, it has to be implemented by independent central banks whose commitment to low inflation is credible. Ongoing depreciations that follow from imprudent of opportunistic monetary behaviour will surely come to be expected by agents, and hence will have no real effect; occasional depreciations that respond exclusively to unforecastable shocks will, almost by definition, have real effects. But floating also faces questions of implementation. Given that no central bank completely abstains from intervention in currency markets, what principles should govern such intervention? The paper elaborates on a number of points in this regard on which recent experience is likely to be instructive, but on which more research is needed. Finally, any exchange-rate regime, and especially one of flexible rates, requires complementary policies to increase its chances of success. In this context, some have suggested the use of capital controls; less controversial is the need for prudential regulation of the financial system and for counter-cyclical fiscal policy.

Alternative Monetary Rules in the Open-Economy: a Welfare-Based Approach

Using an optimizing model we compare alternative monetary policy rules and exchange rate regimes for a small stochastic open economy with imperfect competition and short run price rigidity. The criteria to choose among rules and regimes are obtained using a welfare criterion derived from the utility function of the representative agent. The main findings of this paper are that, depending on what shocks affect this economy, the effects of inflation targeting on output and inflation volatility depend crucially on the exchange rate regime and the inflation index being targeted. With regard to the exchange rate, we find that the loss in agents’ welfare is much higher under managed exchange rates than under flexible rates in presence of real shocks, while for nominal shocks the reverse is true. As far as the definition of inflation targeting index is concerned, domestic inflation appears to outperform the CPI. Finally, flexible inflation targeting is welfare superior to strict targeting.

La disciplina fiscal y la elección de régimen cambiario

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) La opinión convencional es que los tipos de cambio fijos permiten una mayor disciplina fiscal que los tipos flexibles, pero las experiencias recientes en Europa, la experiencia de los países subsaharianos en los años 80 y los antecedentes de los intentos de estabilización en América Latina suscitan dudas sobre esta opinión. Para analizar este acertijo presentamos un modelo intertemporal estándar con perfecta movilidad del capital y flexibilidad de precios, en el que la política fiscal es determinada de manera endógena por una autoridad fiscal maximizadora.

Quid pro Quo: National Institutions and Sudden Stops in International Capital Movements

The paper explores the incidence of sudden stops in capital flows on the incentives for building national institutions that secure property rights in a world where sovereign defaults are possible equilibrium outcomes. Also thepaper builds upon the benchmark model of sovereign default and direct creditor sanctions by Obstfeld and Rogoff (1996). In their model it is in the debtor country’s interest to “tie its hands” and secure the property rights of lenders as much as possible because this enhances the credibility of the country’s romise to repay and prevents default altogether. It incorporate two key features of today’s international financial markets that are absent from the benchmark model: the possibility that lenders can trigger sudden stops in capital movements, and debt contracts in which lenders transfer resources to the country at the start of the period, which have to be repaid later. The papershows that under these conditions the advice “build institutions to secure repayment at all costs” may be very bad advice indeed.