This paper discusses the acceleration of inflation in Brazil. In the early 1980s, the Brazilian inflation rate increased in good measure because of the balance of payments crisis and because of large depreciations of the cruzeiro. The Cruzado Plan failed to stop inflation because of an extremely...

This paper discusses the regressive nature of the inflation tax and she limited extent of its impact on those individuals below the poverty line. It also argues that inflation affects poverty mainly through its impact on real wages: the empirical evidence shows that wages increase more slowly...

This paper studies investment in Latin America and explores the relationships of investment with growth, exchange rates and the terms of trade. It addresses the theoretical issue of the relationship between the real exchange rate and the real price of capital with a model of a small open economy...

The exchange rate consistent with high employment and a balanced current account are rarely the same as the rates consistent with asset market equilibrium at interest rates policy makers wish to prevail. Whenever rates are freely determined the assets markets prevail and the results may be hard...

This report brings together three separate, short papers on problems of Brazilian trade and payments. The following topics are addressed: the determinants of export behavior in the manufactures sector, measures of the real exchange rate and the monetary approach applied to the external balance....

Financial factors have been assigned strategic importance in economic development. But very different factors have been isolated in the respective experiences: in Asia unrepressed financial markets in mobilizing saving and allocating investment have been given prominence. In Latin America the...

This paper investigates the adjustment process to a reduction in the rate of credit creation in an open, flexible exchange rate economy. The framework of analysis is one of rational expectations with respect to interest rates, inflation and depreciation. The special feature of the model is the...

In the past fifteen years key exchange rates have moved in larger and more persistent ways than advocates of flexible rates in the late 1960s would have left anyone free to imagine. Certainly there was no expectation of constancy for nominal exchange rates. But real exchange rate movements of 30...

The exchange rate has by 1984 become as central to United States economic policy discussions as it has long been in the rest of the world. In this paper we show how the standard closed-economy macroeconomic model -- the Phillips curve augmented IS-LM analysis -- has to be modified for the United...

This paper discusses exchange rate rules in their role as macroeconomic instruments. Two quite different approaches are pursued. The traditional view is that exchange rate flexibility is a substitute for money wage flexibility so that managed money and managed exchange rates yield the necessary...