How much to commit to an exchange rate rule: balancing credibility and flexibility

Alex Cukierman, Miguel A. Kiguel and Nissan Liviatan

No 931, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors which determine the strength of commitment that policymakers choose to back up a fixed exchange rate system. In practice the commitment level is achieved by choosing a particular set of monetary and exchange rate arrangements. The authors develop a Barro-Gordon type model in which the policymaker has to decide how much to commit under uncertainty. An important assumption is that the stronger the commitment to the fixed exchange rate the greater the political cost of reneging on it. Thus, prior to deciding on the choice of exchange rate arrangements the policymaker has to weigh the benefits, to the disinflation program, from making a strong commitment against the potential costs of being forced to renege on it. Some of the more technical details are presented in appendices. The paper illustrates the results of the model with examples from Latin American countries and concludes with a comparison of the results of the authors approach with related work.

Keywords: Economic Stabilization; Macroeconomic Management; Economic Theory&Research; Fiscal&Monetary Policy; Foreign Trade Promotion and Regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992-07-31
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... d/PDF/multi_page.pdf (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:wbk:wbrwps:931

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().