Argentina adopted currency type board arrangements to put an end to monetary instability in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries under very different historical circumstances and contexts with very different results. The first currency board functioned within an international system that...

This paper argues that the pass-through in Brazil has fallen compared with estimates in other studies on earlier time periods, and remains low. Whereas pass-through effects where high and close to 1 in the high-inflation period, they seem to have fallen to around 0.2 after the Real Plan...

Conventional wisdom associates the two lost decades of economic stagnation in Brazil to macroeconomic imbalances and excessive budgetary deficits. This paper suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the fiscal crisis of the state in Brazil was the result of the liberalization strategy...

On many measures, the indigenous movement in Ecuador has been the most successful in Latin America. This is particularly the case in political terms where they were key players until leaving the Gutiérrez cabinet. Their influence on the direction of economic policy has been minimal, however,...

There is widespread discussion both within and outside Cuba concerning what direction the Cuban economy will go under its new interim president Raúl Castro. This short paper is intended to contribute two pieces of information that are needed to intelligently discuss that issue- where Cuba’s...

The surge in academic work on globalization has made several of the topics dear to authors of the dependency school relevant once again. Therefore a reconsideration of dependency theory seems to be appropriate. There are at least two approaches to dependency. This paper analyzes critically their...

The relationship between the exchange rate and public debt is intermediated by two mechanisms. On the one hand, exchange rate devaluation implies higher payment on local currency over the debt denominated in foreign currency. On the other hand, the rise of public debt leads a perception of...

The paper sheds light on the apparent success of dollarization in Ecuador. The experience of Argentina with convertibility is used to anchor the analysis. Two key factors are seen to play the most important role; first, the behavior of the real exchange rate and second, the source of external...

It has become common sense to argue that the reforms of social policies after the 1988 Constitution were somehow instrumental in explaining social progress, and that Lula’s policies mark a break with the 1988 Constitution. We suggest that both propositions are misleading. We argue that the...