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 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...

The author begins by asking why Brazilian policymakers opted to target the exchange rate to stabilize inflation when this strategy had already failed in Mexico. The answer: It was no longer possible to accomodate the country's high inflation rate through the pervasive use of price indexation and...

La tasa de inflacion en el Brasil llego a 40% mensuales durante el ultimo trimestre de 1989. De nuevo, los gobernantes examinaron la posibilidad de imponer controles de precios, a pesar del fracaso de los tres intentos anteriores por abatir la inflacion mediante indizaciones en 1986, 1987 y...