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

Gerardo della Paolera () and Alan Taylor

No 7386, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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.

JEL-codes: E42 E51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: DAE IFM ME
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Gerardo della Paolera & Alan M. Taylor, 2001. "Bailing Out: Internal versus External Convertibility," NBER Chapters, in: Straining at the Anchor: The Argentine Currency Board and the Search for Macroeconomic Stability, 1880-1935, pages 165-187 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Published as Paolera, Gerardo Della and Alan M. Taylor. "Internal Versus External Convertibility And Emerging-market Crises: Lessons From Argentine History," Explorations in Economic History, 2002, v39(4,Oct), 357-398.

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Working Paper: Internal Versus External Convertibility and Developing-Country Financial Crises: Lessons from the Argentine Bank Bailout of the 1930s (1999)
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