We argue that a higher share of the private sector in a country's external debt raises the incentive to stabilize the exchange rate. We present a simple model in which exchange rate volatility does not affect agents' welfare if all the debt is incurred by the government. Once we introduce...

The long run gains from reductions in distortionary tariffs are robustly positive in neoclassical economies. In the short run, however, depending on the prevailing exchange rate and tax regimes, a combination of producer price deflation and nominal wage stickiness can cause trade liberalisation...

Traditional models of the choice of exchange rate regimes ignore the destabilizing effects of sharp and unanticipated exchange rate movements. Recent research, however, has shown that these movements have real costs in emerging markets owing to the dollarization of liabilities. This paper...

This paper examines the trade-off between exchange rate stability and monetary autonomy for a target zone. Using the guilder-mark target zone in the pre-EMU period as a case study, we empirically estimate how much policy discretion the Dutch central bank still enjoyed and how much had been ceded...

We analyse the choice of exchange rate regimes of the 25 transition economies in Europe and the CIS after 1990. The empirical results show that the traditional Optimum Currency Area considerations provide relevant guidance for the exchange rate regime choices in these countries. Moreover,...

Given the absence of publicly available information on foreign exchange intervention, we propose an index of central bank intervention in the exchange market to classify exchange rate regimes adopted by four East Asian economies. We revisit an old debate on whether these crisis-effected East...

This paper analyses whether volatility changes in the bilateral and effective real exchange rates of the OECD industrial countries are associated with a specific nominal exchange rate regime. To that end, we examine the real exchange rate behaviour during the 1960-2003 period, therefore covering...

From 1990 onwards, Eastern European countries have had as a primary economic goal the convergence with the traditionally capitalist states in Western Europe. The usage of various exchange rate regimes to accomplish the convergence of inflation and interest rates, in order to create a fully...

This paper studies the choice of the exchange rate regime in emerging and developing countries. The literature on exchange rate regimes is often based either on theoretical models or on empirical analysis. Our paper presents a different perspective by developing a theoretical model which is...

We study the apparent disconnect between what countries announce to be their exchange rate regime and what they de facto implement. Even though discrepancies between announcements and de facto polices are frequent, there is a lack of understanding of actual patterns and underlying reasons. We...