A MODEL OF PARALLEL CURRENCIES UNDER FREE FLOATING EXCHANGE RATES

Juan Castañeda, Sebastian Damrich and Pedro Schwartz
Additional contact information
Juan Castañeda: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise
Sebastian Damrich: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise
Pedro Schwartz: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise

No 160, Studies in Applied Economics from The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise

Abstract: The production of good money seems to be out of reach for most countries. The aim of this paper is to examine how a country can attain monetary stability by granting legal tender to two freely tradable currencies circulating in parallel. Then we examine how such a system of parallel currencies could be used for any Member State of the Eurozone, with both the euro and a national currency accepted as legal tender, which we argue is a desirable monetary arrangement particularly but not only in times of crisis. The necessary condition for this parallel system to function properly is confidence in the good behaviour of the monetary authorities in charge of each currency. A fully floating exchange rate between the two would keep the issuers of the new local currency in check. This bottom-up solution based on currency choice could also be applied in countries aspiring to enter the Eurozone, instead of the top-down once and for all imposition of the euro as a single currency that has turned out to be very stringent and has shown institutional flaws during the recent Eurozone crisis of 2009 – 2013. Our scheme would have alleviated the plight of Greece and Cyprus. It could also ease the entry of the eight Member States still missing from the Eurozone.

Keywords: Parallel currency system; monetary competition; inverse Gresham law; Eurozone (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2020/06/A- ... g-Exchange-Rates.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:jhisae:0160

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Studies in Applied Economics from The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Steve H. Hanke (hanke@jhu.edu).