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...

This paper suggests that Clark’s views regarding the Keynesian Revolution illuminate some of the limitations of the Keynesian orthodoxy that developed after the war, bringing more institutional detail and a greater preocupation with dynamic analysis. Clark developed the multiplier in dynamic...

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...

This paper suggests that heterodox economists should not think of themselves as economists first, and only secondarily as heterodox, and must emphasize methodological issues, in particular the different assumptions (or axioms) implicit in their theories vis-à-vis the mainstream. The paper...

Modern finance has a conceptually unified theoretical core that includes the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), the relationship between risk and return based on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), the Modigliani-Miller theorems (M&M) and the Black-Scholes-Merton approach to option pricing....

The current economic global crisis has thrown fiscal policy onto the center stage. However, the current crisis episode has not produced any change regarding the standing role and function of fiscal policy in developed and developing market economies that has dominated the economics profession...

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...

This paper provides a rejoinder to Colander, Holt and Rosser (2010) strategy to win friends and influence mainstream economics. It is suggested that their strategy is counter-productive, and while it might gain them friends, it will not lead to increased influence of heterodox ideas within what...