The implications of a large public debt for the implementation of capital controls for an economy where tax revenue collection is costly are examined. Conditions are analyzed under which policymakers will resort to capital controls to reduce the cost of recycling domestic public debt. The...

This paper presents a cash-in-advance framework, with variable income velocity, where the domestic effects, as well as the international transmission, of financial innovation can be analyzed. In particular, the discussion emphasizes the role of currency substitution and of cross-border transfers...

How should the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) respond to the challenges of the new century? As recently as the early 1990s, governments and policymakers in Latin America and the Caribbean relied on the IDB and other multilateral institutions not only as important sources of finance but...

This paper argues that there were two key factors behind the resilience of Latin American financial systems during the crisis. The first was the initial conditions that a number of countries in the region faced during the pre-crisis years. Sound macroeconomic policies and highly improved...

Emerging market economies have undergone an extraordinary period of turbulence in capital markets during the period 1997–2002, and volatility remains a salient feature of the financial landscape.This paper discusses a number of central issues for the future of the region's financial markets....

Since the 1970s, a number of high-inflation Latin American countries have experienced a persistent process of quot;dollarizationquot;. To interpret some of the stylized facts, this paper presents a simple model in which dollarization reflects the fact that there are costs involved in switching...

Optimal management of the public debt is explored in a context where economic policy is continuously revised because, when the public debt is non indexed, policy makers are tempted to use inflation in order to reduce the real value of the public debt.The model`s implications are explored...

This paper focuses on the role of debt maturity in managing the government`s incentives to use opportunistic inflation to reduce the ex post real value of its nominal liabilities. The maturity structure of government debt is shown to be a powerful instrument to affect the time profile of the...

This paper studies the transmission of monetary and fiscal disturbances under capital controls that are implemented via dual exchange rates. The results are contrasted with those under fixed exchange rates and perfect capital mobility. While under perfect capital mobility, permanent policy...