Impuesto cambiario y subsidios : Uruguay 1937-1959

This paper explores the distributional impacts associated with the formation and management of the Exchange Difference Fund in Uruguay during the period 1937-1959. Under the economic crisis of the thirties and the implementation of mechanisms to cope with it, the government assumed the control over the foreign exchange market and thus the possibility of establishing by his discretion the values of foreign currency, especially the price that was to rule in any transaction of purchase or sale of it. The study of this Fund offers the possibility of an approximation –at a micro level- of the sources that have financed public spending, its destination and the redistributive impact of government’s fiscal policy.