The volatile movements in commodity prices during the last years have raised new questions to be discussed in both policy and academic spheres. Up to the financial slump of the second quarter of 2008 commodity prices grew fast for several consecutive years in a highly volatile context. The...

This paper investigates the long run behavior of real exchange rates in nineteen countries of Latin America over the period 1970 - 2006. Our data does not support the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis, implying that real shocks tend to have permanent effects on Latin America's real...

In this paper we study the integration properties of some of the main macroeconomic series of Argentina. We present a robust methodology for the analysis of persistence of shocks affecting macroeconomic series and its consequences on the modeling of the cyclical and permanent components. Our...

Currency board (CB) was a corner solution for Argentine hyperinflation, however its balance is controversial. How does a CB work as a long run regime? After evaluating the result of ten years CB regime, we obtain important lessons for a monetary union and for dollarization proposals. We discuss:...

Using a three countries model with flexible exchange rates, this study tries to analyze the situation in an asymmetric monetary area around a big country. The model consider a stochastic framework where the monetary policy is used to stabilize the inflation and the current account. The monetary...

This study gives a non-traditional framework for the evaluation of an asymmetric monetary association (such as dollarization). We discuss the relationship between real volatility and country risk and determine the necessary conditions for dollarization to improve social welfare. We concentrate...