This article assesses the impacts of Brazil's exchange-based stabilization plan (Plano Real) on the country's external financial fragility and discusses alternative exchange policies to overcome the external vulnerability. An index for external financial fragility is applied to a time series of...

This paper aims to discuss the proposal for monetary union in Mercosur in the light of the theory of Optimal Currency Area (OCA). It shows that there is no evidence that macroeconomic convergence can be reached in Mercosur, since the area only minimally achieved some basic criteria defined by...