Experimentos monetarios y bancarios en Argentina: 1861-1930

Nuevos enfoques en la historia económica de España y de América Latina. Homenaje a Robert W. Fogel y Douglas C. North, Premios Nobel de Economía 1993Editada en la Universidad Carlos IIIDurante el período 1861-1930, Argentina se rigió por un sistema muy parecido al patrón oro en los años 1867-1876, 1883-1884 y 1900-1913. En los períodos restantes tuvo un patrón papel dirigido, siempre con el objetivo de restablecer la convertibilidad. En este ensayo se muestra que la sustitución de monedas ya era un fenómeno económico en la economía argentina. Si así fuera, debería matizarse, cuando no rechazarse, la idea de que abandonando el patrón oro, Argentina podía llevar a cabo una política monetaria y bancaria independiente para aislar el nivel de actividad económica de las perturbaciones procedentes del resto del mundo. A medio plazo, los intentos de inflar (deflactar) la economía se tradujeron principalmente en variaciones de los tipos de cambio y/o de los precios.During the 1861-1930 period, Argentina was under a virtual gold-exchange standard regime in the 1867-1876, 1883-1884 and 1900-1913 years. In the remaining periods, a managed paper standard was in place, always with the aim to restore convertibility. I show that currency substitution was already an economic phenomenon in the Argentine economy. If currency substitution prevailed, then the notion that Argentina, by abandoning the Gold-Standard rule, could manage an independent monetary and banking policy to insulate the level of economic activity from shock arising from the rest of the world should be qualified if not dismissed. In the medium run, domestic attempts to inflate (or deflate) the economy were mainly reflected in changes in the foreign exchange rates and/or prices.Publicad

Internal Versus External Convertibility and Developing-Country FinancialCrises: Lessons from the Argentine Bank Bailout of the 1930's

Argentina's money and banking system was hit hard by the Great Depression. The banking sector was awash with bad assets that built up in the 1920's. Gold convertibility was suspended in December 1929, even before the crisis seriously damaged the core economies. Commonly, these events are seen as being driven by external real shocks associated with the World Depression, despite the puzzle of the timing. We argue for an alternative, or complementary, explanation of the crisis that focuses on the inside-outside money relationship in a system of fractional-reserve banking and gold-standard rules. This internal explanation for the crisis involves no timing puzzle. The tension between internal and external convertibility can be felt when banks fall into bad times, and an internal drain can feed an external drain. Such was the case after financial fragility appeared in the 1914-27 suspension. Resumption in 1928 was probably unsustainable due to the problems of the financial system, and a dynamic model illustrates the point well. The resolution of the crisis required lender-of-last-resort actions by the state, discharged at first by the state bank issuing rediscounts to private banks. When the state bank became insolvent, the currency board started bailing out the system using high-powered money. Thus came about the demise of the currency board and the creation of a central bank in 1935, an institution that had no pretense of a nominal- anchor commitment device and no ceiling on lender-of-last-resort actions-innovations with painful long-run consequences for inflation performance and financial-sector health. As one of its first substantive actions, the central bank engineered a bailout of the banking system at a massive social cost. The parallels with recent developing-country crises are remarkable, and the implications for the institutional design of monetary and banking systems are considered.