رژیم نرخ ارز و تحرک سرمایه: مسائل و برخی از دروس مرکزی و کشورهای متقاضی اروپای شرقی

The five most advanced central and eastern European countries that aspire to join the European Union, EMU and to adopt the euro, have pursued very dissimilar exchange rate strategies up to now. Yet, there is only one instance in which a country was unable to sustain its chosen exchange rate regime. This paper explores two keys to exchange rate sustainability and argues that failure to maintain internal policy consistency and policy credibility is decisive in forced exit. The paper then relates the findings to possible policy lessons for emerging market economies in the Western Hemisphere

Interest in the appropriateness of various exchange rate regimes has surged in the last decade, in response to three major and interrelated developments. First, capital account liberalization has made capital more mobile internationally including capital surges and reversals associated with the integration of financial markets. Second, a number of exchange rate and payments crises, including the ERM crises of 1992/1993, the Mexican crisis of 1995 and the Asian crises of 1997/1998, has added to financial instability. Third, aspiration of central and eastern European countries to join European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and ultimately to adopt the euro has raised questions about the optimal transition regime. This paper explores certain issues raised by these developments and considers some lessons for emerging market economies implicit in the recent experience of the eastern European economies. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides some background on the developments noted above, while Section 3 sketches the initial transition phase and the first ten years of transition. In Section 4, two keys to exchange rate sustainability–internal policy consistency and policy credibility–are explored and put into the European context, where the experiences of Austria and Finland with financial market deregulation and liberalization are especially instructive and relevant to the (smaller) countries in the Western Hemisphere. Section 5 provides a comparative evaluation of pegs and currency boards, while Section 6 examines the effect of preparations for currency union on the sustainability of a regime of pegged rates. Section 7 concludes with some policy lessons.