This paper reviews the recent experience of a half-dozen Latin American inflation targeting (IT) nations. Repeated and large deviations from the standard IT framework are documented: exchange market interventions have been lasting and widespread; the real exchange rate has often become a target of...

This paper reviews the recent experience of a half-dozen Latin American inflation targeting (IT) nations. Repeated and large deviations from the standard IT framework are documented: exchange market interventions have been lasting and widespread; the real exchange rate has often become a target of...

Emerging markets (sometimes endowed with fertile pampas) have limited access to world capital markets and suffer from original sin: they cannot borrow in their own currency. Does this mean that monetary and exchange rate policy has non-standard effects in such countries? We develop a simple...

We study the relation among exchange rates, balance sheets, and macroeconomic outcomes in a small open economy. Because liabilities are dollarized,' a real devaluation has detrimental effects on entreprenurial net worth, which in turn constrains investment due to financial frictions. But there...

We study the relation among exchange rates, balance sheets, and macroeconomic outcomes in a small open economy. Because liabilities are dollarized,' a real devaluation has detrimental effects on entreprenurial net worth, which in turn constrains investment due to financial frictions. But there...

Emerging markets (sometimes endowed with fertile pampas) have limited access to world capital markets and suffer from original sin: they cannot borrow in their own currency. Does this mean that monetary and exchange rate policy has non-standard effects in such countries? We develop a simple...

This paper reviews the recent experience of a half-dozen Latin American inflation targeting (IT) nations. Repeated and large deviations from the standard IT framework are documented: exchange market interventions have been lasting and widespread; the real exchange rate has often become a target of...

According to standard economic theory, fiscal policy should be counter-cyclical. In the neoclassical smoothing model of Barro (1979), a government should optimally run surpluses in good times and deficits in bad times. That is the same a government should do, though for different reasons, in the...

We revisit the issue of fiscal procyclicality in commodity-rich nations -commodity republics in the nomenclature of this paper. Since commodity prices are plausibly a main driver of fiscal policy outcomes in these countries, we focus on the behavior of fiscal variables across the commodity...

This paper reviews the recent experience of a half-dozen Latin American inflation-targeting (IT) nations. We document repeated and large deviations from the standard IT framework: exchange market interventions have been lasting and widespread; the real exchange rate has often become a target of...