The recent collapse of the Argentine currency board raises new questions about the desirability of formal fixed exchange rate regimes in modern developing economies. This paper examines the impact of dollarized liabilities with potential default for a currency board with costly abandonment. We...

In a target-zone exchange rate system, both fundamentals and exchange rate expectations, reflected in interest rate differentials between the domestic and anchor currency, determine the exchange rate. However, the scope to capture exchange rate expectations is limited when policy rates are close...

This paper proposes a quasi-bounded process for exchange rate dynamics within a target zone, consistent with a credible exchange rate band in which the exchange rate cannot breach the strong-side limit while the weak-side limit is only accessible under restricted conditions of the relationship...

Currency risk is one of the two components of the total interest rate differential. Hard pegs, such as currency boards, are meant to reduce or even eliminate currency risk, thus, reducing domestic interest rates. This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of the currency risk premium...

Empirical evidence shows that fixed exchange rates do not provide more fiscal discipline than flexible regimes, despite the fact that, in principle, fixing the exchange rate imposes important restrictions on seignoriage revenues. A more detailed analysis of seignoriage allows to explain the...

Milton Friedman's longstanding advocacy in favor of floating exchange rates has contributed to a mistaken belief that he opposed currency board regimes or outright dollarization. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over a period of almost five decades Friedman consistently made it clear...