رژیم های نرخ ارز در کشورهای در حال توسعه و اقتصادهای در حال ظهور و بروز برنامه های صندوق بین المللی پول

The global economic crisis will compel many countries to revise key economic policies, including their exchange rate regime. The International Monetary Fund will have significant influence on their choices, and has exhibited a bias against intermediate regimes. We examine the link between exchange rate regimes and IMF program use and find no evidence that countries with intermediate exchange rate regimes require more frequent IMF assistance. Rather they appear somewhat less dependent, especially when compared to fixed exchange rates. Our results suggest that intermediate regimes should remain a viable and possibly desirable exchange rate choice for some countries.

The debate over the relative merits and demerits of alternative exchange rate regimes has been a central component of international macroeconomics for as long as the subject has existed. The issues involved, both theoretical and empirical, are complex. Even so, during the second half of the 1990s, and with a spate of economic crises in various parts of the world, a consensus of sorts appeared to emerge suggesting that any attempt to “softly” manage exchange rates in a world of capital mobility was unwise. These “intermediate regimes,” it seemed, had been a common feature of the crisis countries, many of which had ended up with IMF programs. The consensus view was that emerging and developing countries should opt for either of the corner solutions in preference to any intermediate exchange rate regime. In proffering advice about the selection of exchange rate regime, the IMF has appeared to share the bi-polar view, and has expressed skepticism about intermediate regimes. A recent report from the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO, 2007) has stimulated further debate about the advice that the IMF should be giving on the choice of exchange rate regime and has stressed the need for more analysis. In this paper we examine whether, and in what way, a country’s choice of exchange rate regime affects the probability of it having an arrangement with the IMF, allowing for the other factors that determine the incidence of IMF programs. Do countries with hard pegs or freely flexible exchange rates tend to use the IMF with a frequency that is higher, lower, or comparable to those with intermediate exchange rate regimes? What are the implications for the exchange rate advice offered by the IMF, and should its staff be dissuading countries from adopting intermediate regimes? The paper is organized in the following way. Section 2 provides a brief summary of the recent literature on the choice of exchange rate regime. Section 3 explains our methodology and presents our findings. Section 4 briefly examines the policy implications of our results, while Section 5 offers a few concluding remarks.

At the end of the 1990s, and in the aftermath or a series of crises in emerging economies, a consensus emerged around the so-called bi-polar approach to choosing exchange rate regimes. The IMF appeared to be part of the consensus. The approach suggested that developing and emerging economies should opt for either firm fixity or for free flexibility but nothing in between. However, detractors from the consensus remained unconvinced. Systematic tests of the association between exchange rate regimes and the incidence of economic crises have been a recent and expanding addition to the debate. The contribution of this study and its principal innovation is to examine the association between exchange rate regimes, variously defined, and the incidence of IMF programs. Across a full sample of developing and emerging countries over 1974–2000, we find that intermediate exchange rate regimes are significantly less likely to be associated with the signing of IMF programs than some of the bi-polar alternatives. Disaggregating the data in various ways and using de jure as well as de facto classifications of exchange rates does not lead us to reject the idea that intermediate exchange rate regimes remain as viable options, with some desirable properties of internal sustainability. As a consequence, the IMF should certainly not understate the attractions of macroeconomic strategies based on intermediate regimes, or overstate the attractions of those based on the polar extremes.