Over the 1980s and 1990s, GDP growth had stagnated because of oil export price volatility and natural disasters, the sacrifice of capital formation to heavy external public debt service, and incomplete and uneven structural reform. The exchange rate depreciation that proved continually necessary...

The author describes a spread-sheet planning model to help determine the government deficit consistent with a policymaker's"vector"of principal macroeconomic objectives (including real GDP growth, inflation, exchange rate, and international reserve accumulation). The model focuses on the...

Under the August 1988"Primavera"Plan and the July 1989"Bunge y Born"Plan stabilization programs, the Argentine authorities sought to anchor the price level through an appreciated real exchange rate, which they sustained through policies that maintained high domestic interest rates. The public...