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![THE
QUARTERLY
JOURNAL
OF ECONOMICS
Vol. CXVII May 2002 Issue 2
FEAR OF FLOATING*
GUILLERMO
A. CALVO
ANDCARMEN
M. REINHART
Many emerging market countries have suffered financial crises. One view
blames soft pegs for these crises. Adherents of this view suggest that countries
move to corner solutions-hard pegs or floating exchange rates. We analyze the
behavior of exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates to assess whether there is
evidence that country practice is moving toward corner solutions. We focus on
whether countries that claim they are floating are indeed doing so. We find that
countries that say they allow their exchange rate to float mostly do not-there
seems to be an epidemic case of "fear of floating."
1. INTRODUCTION
After the Asian financial crisis and the subsequent crises in
Russia, Brazil, and Turkey, many observers have suggested that
intermediate exchange rate regimes are vanishing and that coun-
tries around the world are being driven toward corner solutions.
The bipolar solutions are either hard pegs-such as currency
boards, dollarization, or currency unions-or freely floating ex-
change rate regimes.' On the surface, at least, this statement
accords with recent trends. Twelve countries in Europe chose to
* The authors wish to thank Alberto Alesina, Enrique Mendoza, Vincent
Reinhart, Juan Trevino, Carlos Vegh, seminar participants at the Hoover Insti-
tution conference on "Currency Unions," Stanford, California, Summer Camp,
Paracas, Peru, International Monetary Fund, and the NBER's Summer Institute
2000 in International Finance and Macroeconomics, and two anonymous referees
for very useful suggestions, and Facundo Martin, Ioannis Tokatlidis, and Juan
Trevino for superb research assistance. This paper was written while the authors
were professors at the University of Maryland. The paper represents the views of
the authors and not necessarily those of the institutions with which they are
affiliated.
1. For recent interesting discussions of the corner solution hypothesis, see
Frankel, Schmukler, and Serv6n [2001] and Fischer [2001]. Obstfeld and Rogoff
[1995], who stress the increased difficulty of maintaining a peg in the face of rising
capital mobility, also anticipate many of these issues.
? 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2002
379](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-2-2048.jpg)
![382 QUARTERLY
JOURNALOFECONOMICS
fluctuations in the context of an inflation target is an issue we
take up in the next section. We focus on the behavior of monthly
percent changes (unless otherwise noted) of each variable, one at
a time, and compare these across regimes.4
IL.1. Methodology Issues
It is widely accepted that a "pure float" is an artifact of
economics textbooks. Yet, despite occasional instances of foreign
exchange market intervention, sometimes even in a coordinated
fashion, the United States dollar (US$) floated about as freely
against the German deutsche mark (DM) (and now the euro), and
the Japanese Yen (Y), as any currency has ever been allowed to
float. Thus, if the only criterion was the extent of commitment to
float their currencies, the G-3 are the best candidates to serve as
a benchmark for comparing whether countries that claim they
float are indeed doing so. However, the wealthy G-3 countries all
share the common feature that (in varying degrees) their curren-
cies are the world's reserve currencies, which somewhat reduces
their value as benchmarks for smaller industrial nations and,
especially, for emerging market economies. However, another
comparator is also available: Australia, with a credible commit-
ment to floating, shares some features of the other smaller indus-
trial nations and developing countries that make up the lion's
share of our sample. For example, the Australian dollar is not a
world reserve currency, and Australia continues to rely heavily
on primary commodity exports, like many of the developing coun-
tries in our sample. As a consequence of the latter, its terms of
trade exhibit a higher volatility than those of the G-3, and it is
more representative of the characteristics of many of the non-G-3
countries in our study. Giving weight to both criteria (commit-
ment to floating and shared characteristics), we opted to use both
Australia and the G-3 as benchmarks.
Our strategy is to compare what countries say and what they
do. What they say is reported to the IMF, which classifies coun-
tries into four types of exchange rate arrangements: peg, limited
flexibility, managed floating, and freely floating. Limited flexibil-
ity has been used, almost exclusively, to classify European coun-
tries (prior to the monetary union) with exchange rate arrange-
4. In a longer working paper version of this paper, we also studied the
behavior of the monetary aggregates, real ex post interest rates, and primary
commodity prices (see Calvo and Reinhart [2001]).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-5-2048.jpg)
![FEAR OFFLOATING 387
ceiling (depreciation) was crawling; Israel and Colombia (during
1994-1998) also had fairly wide bands.6
For the United States, for example, as shown in column (3) of
Table I, there is about a 59 percent probability that the monthly
US$/DM exchange rate change would fall within a relatively
narrow plus/minus 2 1/2 percent band. For the US$/Y exchange
rate, that probability is slightly higher, at 61 percent. By con-
trast, for Bolivia, Canada, and India (all declared floaters during
that period), the probability of staying within the band is around
95 percent-significantly above the benchmark of Australia,
where the comparable probability is about 70 percent.5 Put in
another way, there is only about a 5 percent probability in those
three countries that the exchange rate will change more than 2 1/2
percent in any given month. On average, for this group of floaters,
the probability that the exchange rate change is contained in this
moderate plus/minus 2 1/2-percent band is over 79 percent-sig-
nificantly above that for Australia, Japan, and the United States.
The t-statistic for the difference in means test is 3.38 with a
probability value of (0.00) under the null hypothesis of no differ-
ence. By this metric, post-crisis Mexico approximates a float more
closely than any of the other cases-including Canada.7
Moderate-to-large monthly fluctuations in the exchange rate
are even rarer among the so-called "managed float" episodes
(Table II). For Egypt and Bolivia the probability of a monthly
exchange rate change greater than 2.5 percent is nil-as was the
case for Indonesia and Korea up to the 1997 crisis. Even for
self-proclaimed flexible-rate advocates, such as Chile and Singa-
pore, the frequency distribution of their monthly exchange rate
fluctuations relative to the US dollar do not vaguely resemble
that of Australia, let alone the US$/DM or US$/Y. Even a casual
inspection reveals that a significantly higher proportion of obser-
vations falls within the 2 1/2percent band. On average, there is an
88 percent probability that managed floaters' monthly changes in
the exchange rate are confined to this narrow band. This ex-
change rate stability versus the US dollar (or DM if it is a
6. In a longer working paper version, we also report comparable statistics for
a ? 1 percent band.
7. The variance of the monthly changes Mexican peso/US$ is about twice as
large as the variance of the monthly changes in the Y/US$ exchange rate (see
Calvo and Reinhart [2001]).
For a study of Peru's fear of floating, see Mor6n, Gonti,and Ormento [1999],
who estimate an implicit intervention band. For a discussion on East Asia's Dollar
Standard, see McKinnon [2001].](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-10-2048.jpg)
![FEAR OFFLOATING 391
change rate variation is quite narrow, with all four regimes
associated with a higher chance of changing in a narrow band
than any of the three benchmarks. Second, the smoothness in the
exchange rate seems to be the result of explicit policy choice:
international reserves move more from month to month for those
countries with the more stable exchange rates.
1.3. Interest Rate Volatility, Lack of Credibility, and Monetary
Policy
As discussed earlier, policy intervention to dampen exchange
rate fluctuations is not limited to purchases and sales of foreign
exchange. Interest rates in the United States, Japan, Australia,
and other developed economies are usually set with domestic
considerations in mind. Yet, in many of the other countries in our
sample, the authorities who set domestic interest rates accord a
much higher weight to the stabilization of the exchange rate-
particularly when there are credibility problems or a high pass-
through from exchange rates to prices. This is also the case for
countries which have inflation targets and have a high pass-
through from exchange rates to prices, which is the case we model
in Section III. For evidence that pass-through tends to be higher
for emerging markets, see Calvo and Reinhart [2001]. This policy,
coupled with credibility problems, may help explain the high
relative volatility of interest rates in these countries. As shown in
Table I, while the probability that interest rates change by 400
basis points (4 percent) or more on any given month is about zero
for Australia, Japan, and the United States, that probability is
close to 40 percent for Mexico and about 30 percent for Peru and
India (among the floaters). Nominal and real interest rates in
India are about four times as variable as in the United States; for
Mexico, interest rates are about twenty times as variable-Peru
holds the record.11 A recent example of Chile and Mexico's use of
high interest rates as a means to limit exchange rate pressures
(despite a markedly slowing economy and an adverse terms-of-
trade shock) comes from the aftermath of the Russian crisis in
August 1998. At the time of this writing, Brazil's central bank
hiked interest rates in the midst of a recession and an energy
crisis to halt the slide of its currency, the real.
These examples, however, are not unique in emerging mar-
kets. Among the managed floaters (Table II), other emerging
11. See Calvo and Reinhart [20001 for details.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-14-2048.jpg)
![392 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
markets, including Brazil, Turkey, and Uruguay have an equally
high or higher incidence of large fluctuations in interest rates.
While in the case of Turkey and Uruguay, it is at least partially
due to their comparatively high inflation rates, this is not the case
for the others. The picture painted by the volatility of real ex post
interest rates is quite similar.12
When comparing the four types of exchange rate regimes,
interest rates are the most stable for the limited flexibility
group-which is almost exclusively made up of European devel-
oped countries-and least stable for the managed floating group,
which is comprised predominantly of developing countries.13 In-
deed, Calvo and Reinhart [2001] show that the variance of inter-
est rates in low inflation in emerging markets is about four times
that of developed economies, and that gap is far greater for
countries with a history of inflation.
Moreover, such interest volatility is not the result of adher-
ing to strict monetary targets in the face of large and frequent
money demand shocks. In reality, most of these countries do not
have explicit or implicit money supply rules. Interest rate vola-
tility would appear to be the byproduct of a combination of trying
to stabilize the exchange rate through domestic open market
operations and lack of credibility. These findings are summarized
in the lower panel of Figure I, which plots the relative probabil-
ities of small changes in the exchange rate (again, along the
horizontal axis) and large changes in the nominal interest rate
(the vertical axis). As is evident, the countries that move their
interest rates the most are those that, by self-identification,
would seem to have to move them the least-those that follow a
float or a managed float.
II4. General Observations about the Findings
In this section we have presented evidence that the variabil-
ity in international reserves and interest rates is high relative to
the variations in the exchange rate. Taken together, these find-
ings would suggest that in many cases the authorities are at-
tempting to stabilize the exchange rate through both direct in-
tervention in the foreign exchange market and open market
12. See the working paper version of this paper.
13. It is important to note that some countries with a highly regulated
financial sector and limited capital mobility simultaneously show exchange rate
and interest rate stability; examples include Egypt, India (in the earlier managed
floating period), Kenya, and Nigeria.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-15-2048.jpg)
![FEAROFFLOATING 393
operations. Furthermore, "fear of floating" does not appear to be
limited to a particular region. Indeed, it would appear that in
emerging markets floating has been largely confined to brief
periods following currency crises or chaotic episodes of high in-
flation-an issue we examine in greater detail in Section IV. In
the next section we develop a simple framework that replicates
these stylized facts and provides a rationale for fear of floating.
III. INFLATIONTARGETING, LACK OF CREDIBILITY,
AND FEAR OF FLOATING
There are multiple reasons why countries may be reluctant
to tolerate much variation in their exchange rates.14 Liability
dollarization, which is pervasive in emerging markets, may pro-
duce a fear of floating. In Lahiri and Vegh's [2001] model, fear of
floating arises because there is an output cost associated with
exchange rate fluctuations; in the Caballero and Krishnamurthy
[2001] setting, an inelastic supply of external funds at times of
crises explains exchange rate overshooting and fear of floating.
Calvo and Reinhart [2001] stress concerns about lack of credibil-
ity and loss of access to international capital markets.
In this paper we present a simple model where fear of float-
ing arises from the combination of lack of credibility (as mani-
fested in large and frequent risk-premiums shocks), a high pass-
through from exchange rates to prices, and inflation targeting. It
is worth pointing out that lack of credibility in this setting is not
manifested in first moments. Lack of credibility is associated with
the (higher) variance of the risk premiums shocks. This setting is
motivated by the recent trend in emerging markets to couple
floating with explicit inflation targets. Indeed, at present, this
combination appears to have become the most popular alterna-
tive to fixing the exchange rate.15
Explanations of a central bank's choice of the expansion of
nominal magnitudes have often been framed as some variant of
14. See also Hausmann, Panizza, and Stein [2001].
15. Inflation targeters include Australia (September 1994), Brazil (June
1999), Canada (February 1991), Colombia (September 1999), Czech Republic
(January 1998), Finland (February 1993-June 1998), Israel (January 1992),
South Korea (January 1998), Switzerland (January 2000), Mexico (January 1999),
New Zealand (March 1990), Peru (January 1994), Poland (October 1998), South
Africa (February 2000), Spain (November 1994-June 1998), Sweden (January
1993), Thailand (April 2000), and United Kingdom (October 1992). The dates in
parentheses, which indicate when inflation targeting was introduced, highlight
that for most of the emerging markets the policy change is relatively recent.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-16-2048.jpg)
![394 QUARTERLY
JOURNALOFECONOMICS
Barro and Gordon's [1983] rules-versus-discretion model,
whether allowing for uncertainty (as in Canzoneri [1985]), hetero-
geneity among potential central bankers (as in Rogoff [1985]), or
even electoral choice among central bankers (as in Alesina and
Grilli [1992]). Policy is cast as attempting to reconcile the long-
run benefits of low inflation with the temptation to get extra
output in the near term by generating an inflation surprise that
works through a Phillips curve.
It could be argued that a formulation that describes discre-
tionary monetary policy as attempting to exploit a Phillips curve
is of little practical relevance for most emerging markets. A
history of high and variable inflation in many emerging markets
has eroded any meaningful trade-off between unemployment and
inflation surprises. Furthermore, even in the absence of a noto-
rious inflation history, the evidence suggests that monetary pol-
icy is often procyclical-as central banks raise interest rates in
bad states of nature to restore investor confidence and stem
capital outflows. Yet, this does not imply that the central bank is
indifferent to inflation surprises. Indeed, in many emerging mar-
kets there has been a tendency to use inflation surprises to
improve the government's fiscal position. Overreliance on the
inflation tax (and other easy-to-implement taxes, such as tariffs)
may be due to the fact that in many emerging markets tax
collection is inefficient and evasion is rampant. That is, the bene-
fits to the monetary authority are that surprise inflation gener-
ates additional revenue from money creation and erodes the real
value of nominal government debt and public sector wages.
It could also be argued that the focus on a closed economy
controlling the domestic inflation rate limits the seeming rele-
vance of Barro-Gordon models for many developed and emerging
market countries alike. In fact, central bankers in emerging mar-
ket economies appear to be extremely mindful of external factors
in general and the foreign exchange value of their currency, in
particular. In what follows, the policy choice explicitly considers
the problem of a small open economy setting its nominal interest
rate.
Consider one period of an infinitely lived sequence.16 House-
holds make two sets of decisions at the start of the period based
on incomplete information; that is, before shocks are realized. As
workers, they bargain for nominal wages that will prevail over
16. We will suppress time subscripts where possible.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-17-2048.jpg)
![run. It can be shown in that circumstance that the expected
nominal interest rate would equal
(12) c/(2rq+ bk),
which is smaller than that in the baseline model. The difference
between the two represents, in Rogoff's [1985] term, the premium
paid to investors because the central bank succumbs to the temp-
tation to cheat systematically. The irony, of course, in all these
models is that systematic cheating yields no return.
The representation for interest rate expectations in the base-
line model can be substituted into the interest rate equation. This
yields an expression for the optimal setting of the nominal inter-
est rate in the presence of shocks to asset holding-namely the
risk premium and money demand,
(13) __ c
bk bk+?q
Given our assumption that the shocks are uncorrelated, the vari-
ance of the domestic nominal interest rate is given by
(14) (Ti= Tp2
+ a kb22.
Note that the variance of the nominal interest rate declines as the
commitment to the inflation target rises (b is larger) but in-
creases when credibility is low; that is, when the variance of risk
premium shocks are large. Emerging markets are routinely buf-
feted by large swings in risk premiums. This is evident, for
example, in the volatility of emerging market sovereign credit
ratings (see Reinhart [2001]). But still, even under an extreme
commitment to an inflation target, nominal interest rates will
vary as the central bank finds it optimal to offset risk premium
shocks.
The other variables of interest follow directly. The expected
change in the exchange rate will be, i - p, or
c
(15) bk+ bk?+
That is, in setting its nominal interest rate, the central bank will
completely offset the effects on the exchange rate of foreign risk
premium shocks and partially offset money demand shocks. The](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-21-2048.jpg)
![greater the importance of the inflation target, the greater will be
the offset of money demand shocks.
As a result, the variance of the change in the exchange rate
can be written as
(16) 2/b2k2
Because risk premium shocks are offset completely, the variance
of the exchange rate is independent of the variance of the risk
premium. Moreover, the greater the commitment to an inflation
target, the smaller will be the variance of the change in the
exchange rate. Hence, in this setting inflation targeting can ex-
plain fear of floating.
The real domestic monetary base will equal
R cb
(17) R e
p bk +
? k
The level of real balances increases directly with the weight on
inflation, in that a stronger commitment to low inflation gener-
ates a greater willingness to hold real balances. Real reserves
also vary one for one with the money demand shock but are
invariant to the risk premium shock. The reason, of course, that
real reserves are invariant to the risk premium shock is that the
decision by domestic investors to hold money balances depends on
the expected, not actual, domestic interest rate.
Given this, the variance of the real monetary base will equal
(18) uR%p=t2lk .
As Calvo and Guidotti [1993] point out, the cost of discretionary
policy is due to its effect on expectations, which induce house-
holds to change their behavior regarding real magnitudes. The
cost of a policy that alters expectations has to be weighed against
the possibility of reducing the variance of real magnitudes by
offsetting shocks realized after expectations are formed. In our
framework, smoothing the exchange rate reduces the variation in
real outcomes. Offsetting risk premium shocks and thereby
damping fluctuations in the exchange rate limits unnecessary
variations in domestic inflation. For an inflation targeter, this
may be an end that appears particularly attractive.
It is useful to define a variance ratio that captures the varia-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-22-2048.jpg)
![tion in the exchange rate relative to policy instruments-the
domestic nominal interest rate and reserves-a form of exchange
rate flexibility index. In particular,
(19) A- rlI(4i + a2
In this model, this term reduces to
2
(20)
t
~~~~<
1.
(20) (1 + b2)cr2+ b2k2Cr2<
Note that this variance ratio goes to one as the weight on the
inflation target declines. Conversely, as the weight on the infla-
tion target increases, the variance ratio tends to zero. In the next
section we examine the empirical relevance of this issue by con-
trasting the readings of the variance ratio given by equation (19)
with the actual inflation performance for the various exchange
rate arrangement episodes in our sample.
IV. AN EXCHANGE
RATEFLEXIBILITY
INDEX:
BAsIc TESTSANDCOMPARISONS
We begin this section by conducting some basic tests to as-
sess the extent of foreign exchange market intervention (as mea-
sured by variability in foreign exchange reserves) in the 155
episodes that make up our study. We then proceed to construct an
exchange rate flexibility index, along the lines suggested by the
model in Section III. In both of these exercises, we compare those
cases classified as floaters and managed floaters to the bench-
mark of the committed floaters (here taken to be Australia, Ja-
pan, and the United States).
IV.]. F-tests
As noted in Section II, with regard to exchange rates, interest
rates, and other nominal variables in the local currency, outliers
can significantly distort the variances of some of these variables.
In the case of international reserves, which are reported in dol-
lars and are less affected by periodic mega-devaluations or infla-
tionary spikes, the outlier problem is somewhat less severe.
Hence, in what follows, our emphasis will be on the variability of
international reserves-although in the next subsection we con-
struct a flotation index that is multivariate, as it includes the
variances of the exchange rate and an interest rate.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-23-2048.jpg)
![TABLE IV
PROBABILITIES
OF "FLOATING"
IN COMPARISON
TO THE BENCHMARKCOUNTRY:
A COMPOSITEINDEX OF EXCHANGERATE FLEXIBILITY
Benchmark is
Proportion of total cases where Australia Japan United States
All countries
Index is below benchmark 83.0 95.0 90.0
Index is above benchmark 17.0 5.0 10.0
Advanced economies
Index is below benchmark 78.0 100.0 90.0
Index is above benchmark 22.0 0.0 10.0
Of which: high inflation: 30 percent cutoff 0.0 0.0 0.0
Of which: post-crisis 0.0 0.0 0.0
Emerging market economies
Index is below benchmark 85.7 91.4 90.0
Index is above benchmark 14.3 8.6 10.0
Of which: high inflation 33.0 42.9 42.9
Of which: post-crisis 30.0 50.0 42.9
Source: The authors. The indices for the individual country episodes are not reported here to economize
on space but are available at www.puaf.umd.edu/papers/reinhart.htm.
The high inflation cutoff is 30 percent or higher during the episode in question; this is in keeping with
the threshold used by Easterly [1998] and others.
For, the United States, the index uses the US$/DM (subsequently euro) exchange rate; very similar
results obtain if the US dollar/yen exchange rate is used.
a. Another 22 percent of the cases above the Australian benchmark were accounted for by the G-3
countries.
(depending on whether the Australia or Japan benchmark is
used) recording a "higher degree of variability" either had infla-
tion rates above 30 percent per annum or the period in question
is immediately following a currency crisis. This finding is broadly
consistent with the model's predictions that the higher the weight
placed on seignorage relative to the inflation target, the more
variable the exchange rate relative to the instruments of policy,
as the shocks to the risk premiums will not be offset to the same
degree if the commitment to an inflation target is not binding.
Furthermore, the mode index level for emerging markets is
well below the mode for the advanced economies group. This is
also in line with the predictions of the model. The variance of
nominal interest rates is determined on a one-to-one basis by the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-26-2048.jpg)
![preferred means of smoothing exchange rate fluctuations. This is
evident in the high variability of interest rates in developing
economies and in the practices of countries like Mexico and Peru.
The use of interest rate policy to smooth exchange rate fluctua-
tions has received considerable attention in recent years; see, for
example, Lahiri and Vegh [2000] and references therein.
Our finding that so many of the episodes that come under the
heading of floating exchange rates look similar to many of the
explicit less flexible exchange rate arrangements may help ex-
plain why earlier studies, which relied on the official classifica-
tions of regimes, failed to detect important differences in GDP
growth rates and inflation, across peg and the floating regimes.20
In sum, economic theory provides us with well-defined dis-
tinctions between fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes, but
we are not aware of any criteria that allow us to discriminate as
to when a managed float starts to look like a soft peg. Indeed, the
evidence presented in this paper suggests that it is often quite
difficult to distinguish between the two. On the basis of the
empirical evidence, perhaps, all that we can say is that, when it
comes to exchange rate policy, discretion rules the day.
DATA APPENDIX: DEFINITIONS AND SOURCES
This appendix describes the data used in this study and their
sources. IFS refers to the International Monetary Fund's Inter-
national Financial Statistics.
1. Exchange rates. Monthly end-of-period bilateral exchange
rates are used. For the European countries it is bilateral
exchange rates versus the deutsche mark, except pre-
1973, where it is bilateral rates versus the US dollar. For
selected African countries (as noted) bilateral exchange
rates versus the French franc are used, while for the
remaining countries, which constitute the majority, it is
bilateral rates versus the US dollar. We focus on monthly
percent changes. Source: IFS line ae.
2. Reserves. Gross foreign exchange reserves minus gold. As
with exchange rates, we use monthly percent changes.
Source: IFS line 1L.d.
20. See, for instance, Baxter and Stockman [1989], Ghosh, Gulde, Ostry, and
Wolf [1997], and Edwards and Savastano [2000] for a review of this literature.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fearfloating-210418132357/75/Fear-floating-28-2048.jpg)
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Fear floating
- 1. Fear of Floating Author(s):Guillermo A. Calvo and Carmen M. Reinhart Source: The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 117, No. 2 (May, 2002), pp. 379-408 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2696430 . Accessed: 25/05/2011 13:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Quarterly Journal of Economics. http://www.jstor.org
- 2. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Vol. CXVIIMay 2002 Issue 2 FEAR OF FLOATING* GUILLERMO A. CALVO ANDCARMEN M. REINHART Many emerging market countries have suffered financial crises. One view blames soft pegs for these crises. Adherents of this view suggest that countries move to corner solutions-hard pegs or floating exchange rates. We analyze the behavior of exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates to assess whether there is evidence that country practice is moving toward corner solutions. We focus on whether countries that claim they are floating are indeed doing so. We find that countries that say they allow their exchange rate to float mostly do not-there seems to be an epidemic case of "fear of floating." 1. INTRODUCTION After the Asian financial crisis and the subsequent crises in Russia, Brazil, and Turkey, many observers have suggested that intermediate exchange rate regimes are vanishing and that coun- tries around the world are being driven toward corner solutions. The bipolar solutions are either hard pegs-such as currency boards, dollarization, or currency unions-or freely floating ex- change rate regimes.' On the surface, at least, this statement accords with recent trends. Twelve countries in Europe chose to * The authors wish to thank Alberto Alesina, Enrique Mendoza, Vincent Reinhart, Juan Trevino, Carlos Vegh, seminar participants at the Hoover Insti- tution conference on "Currency Unions," Stanford, California, Summer Camp, Paracas, Peru, International Monetary Fund, and the NBER's Summer Institute 2000 in International Finance and Macroeconomics, and two anonymous referees for very useful suggestions, and Facundo Martin, Ioannis Tokatlidis, and Juan Trevino for superb research assistance. This paper was written while the authors were professors at the University of Maryland. The paper represents the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the institutions with which they are affiliated. 1. For recent interesting discussions of the corner solution hypothesis, see Frankel, Schmukler, and Serv6n [2001] and Fischer [2001]. Obstfeld and Rogoff [1995], who stress the increased difficulty of maintaining a peg in the face of rising capital mobility, also anticipate many of these issues. ? 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2002 379
- 3. 380 QUARTERLY JOURNALOFECONOMICS give uptheir national currencies, while Ecuador was the first of what may be several countries in Latin America to adopt the United States dollar as its official national tender. More recently, El Salvador has also moved in that direction. At the other end of the spectrum, South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, Russia, Chile, Co- lombia, Poland, and, more recently, Turkey have announced their intentions to allow their currencies to float. Hence, on the basis of labels, at least, it would appear that currency arrangements are increasingly bipolar. In this paper we investigate whether countries are, indeed, moving as far to the corners as official labels suggest. Since verifying the existence of a hard peg is trivial, our focus is on the other end of the flexibility spectrum. Specifically, we examine whether countries that claim they are floating their currency are, indeed, doing so. We analyze the behavior of exchange rates, foreign exchange reserves, and interest rates across the spectrum of exchange rate arrangements to assess whether the official labels provide an adequate representation of actual country prac- tice. The data span monthly observations for 39 countries during the January 1970-November 1999 period. One-hundred-and- fifty-five exchange rate arrangements are covered in this sample. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section II we provide de- scriptive statistics for exchange rates, foreign exchange reserves, and money market interest rates. We then compare the behavior of these variables across different exchange rate arrangements. In Section III we present a simple model that replicates several of the key stylized facts in these data; this framework explains why a country might prefer a smooth exchange rate as a result of the combined roles of inflation targeting and low credibility. In Sec- tion IV we introduce an exchange rate flexibility index motivated by the model. This index is meant to provide a multivariate summary measure of the degree of exchange rate flexibility in each episode-hence, it enables us to compare each episode with the benchmark of some of the more committed floaters to see -whether the actual country practices match official labels. The concluding section touches on some of the implications of our findings. II. FEAROFFLOATING: THESTYLIZED EVIDENCE Our data are monthly and span January 1970-November 1999. Thirty-nine countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the West-
- 4. FEAR OFFLOATING 381 ernHemisphere constitute our sample. The countries are Argen- tina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colom- bia, Cote D'Ivoire, Egypt, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Lithuania, Malay- sia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Phil- ippines, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Tur- key, Uganda, Uruguay, the United States, and Venezuela. One- hundred-and-fifty-five exchange rate arrangements are covered in this sample. Our analysis, however, does not give equal atten- tion to all regimes. In the earlier part of the sample, there were pervasive capital controls that make these episodes less relevant for the purposes of comparison to the present environment of high capital mobility. Also, a few of the floating exchange rate episodes occur during hyperinflations, which also complicate comparisons. Our choice of countries was, in part, constrained by the need to be able to parallel official exchange arrangements as reported by the International Monetary Fund, and by data limitations, particu- larly as regards market-determined interest rates.2 However, most regions have adequate coverage, and both developed and developing countries are well represented in the sample.3 In addition to bilateral exchange rates and foreign exchange reserves, we also focus on the time series properties of nominal and real ex post interest rates. The bilateral exchange rate is end-of-period. Whenever possible, the interest rate used is that most closely identified with monetary policy; if that is not avail- able, a treasury bill rate is used. The Data Appendix provides the details on a country-by-country basis. Our desire for a long sam- ple covering many countries precludes using higher frequency data. Relatively few countries report foreign exchange reserve data on a daily or weekly basis, and for many of those that do it is a relatively recent phenomenon. Interest rates are included in the analysis because many countries, particularly in recent years, routinely use interest rate policy to smooth exchange fluctua- tions-the use of interest rate policy to smooth exchange rate 2. While data on exchange rates and reserves are readily available for a much larger set of developing countries, data on interest rates pose a problem in many cases, as they are riddled with large gaps and discontinuities. 3. Many small countries in Africa and the Western Hemisphere with a long history of fixed exchange rates (for instance, the CFA Franc Zone) are not well represented in our sample. As we are primarily interested in verifying whether countries that are currently (or previously) classified as floaters or managed floaters behave like the truly committed floaters, this does not seem like a serious omission.
- 5. 382 QUARTERLY JOURNALOFECONOMICS fluctuations inthe context of an inflation target is an issue we take up in the next section. We focus on the behavior of monthly percent changes (unless otherwise noted) of each variable, one at a time, and compare these across regimes.4 IL.1. Methodology Issues It is widely accepted that a "pure float" is an artifact of economics textbooks. Yet, despite occasional instances of foreign exchange market intervention, sometimes even in a coordinated fashion, the United States dollar (US$) floated about as freely against the German deutsche mark (DM) (and now the euro), and the Japanese Yen (Y), as any currency has ever been allowed to float. Thus, if the only criterion was the extent of commitment to float their currencies, the G-3 are the best candidates to serve as a benchmark for comparing whether countries that claim they float are indeed doing so. However, the wealthy G-3 countries all share the common feature that (in varying degrees) their curren- cies are the world's reserve currencies, which somewhat reduces their value as benchmarks for smaller industrial nations and, especially, for emerging market economies. However, another comparator is also available: Australia, with a credible commit- ment to floating, shares some features of the other smaller indus- trial nations and developing countries that make up the lion's share of our sample. For example, the Australian dollar is not a world reserve currency, and Australia continues to rely heavily on primary commodity exports, like many of the developing coun- tries in our sample. As a consequence of the latter, its terms of trade exhibit a higher volatility than those of the G-3, and it is more representative of the characteristics of many of the non-G-3 countries in our study. Giving weight to both criteria (commit- ment to floating and shared characteristics), we opted to use both Australia and the G-3 as benchmarks. Our strategy is to compare what countries say and what they do. What they say is reported to the IMF, which classifies coun- tries into four types of exchange rate arrangements: peg, limited flexibility, managed floating, and freely floating. Limited flexibil- ity has been used, almost exclusively, to classify European coun- tries (prior to the monetary union) with exchange rate arrange- 4. In a longer working paper version of this paper, we also studied the behavior of the monetary aggregates, real ex post interest rates, and primary commodity prices (see Calvo and Reinhart [2001]).
- 6. FEAROFFLOATING 383 ments vis-'a-visone another (i.e., the Snake, the Exchange Rate Mechanism, etc.). What countries do can be described by the movement in their asset prices. Unless otherwise noted, the bilateral exchange rates are reported with respect to the DM for European countries and with respect to the United States dollar for everyone else. The choice of the DM owes to the fact that this was the most promi- nent reserve currency in Europe and, because Germany was the low inflation country for many years, the anchor for currencies in that region. For the remaining countries, the dollar is the usual anchor currency of choice. Indeed, the largest share of emerging market's external debt is denominated in US dollars, and world trade is predominantly invoiced in US dollars. We denote the absolute value of the percent change in the exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves by E, AFIF, respec- tively. The absolute value of the change in the interest rate, it - it- , is given by Ai. Letting xc denote some critical threshold, we can estimate the probability that the variable x (where x can be E, AFIF, and Ai), falls within some prespecified bounds, conditional on a particular type of exchange rate arrangement. For example, if xc is arbitrarily set at 2.5 percent, then the probability that the monthly exchange rate change falls within the 2.5 percent band should be greatest for the fixed exchange regimes and lowest for the freely floating arrangements, with the other two types of currency regimes positioned in the middle. In our notation, for x = E, we should observe P(x < xc Peg) > P(x < xcIFloat) for x= E. Because shocks to money demand and expectations when the exchange rate is fixed are accommodated through purchases and sales of foreign exchange reserves, the opposite pattern should prevail for changes in foreign exchange reserves. Hence, for x AFIF, P(x < xcIPeg) < P(x < xcIFloat). Thus, the probability that changes in reserves fall within a rela- tively narrow band is a decreasing function of the degree of exchange rate rigidity, as money demand shocks and changes in expectations are accommodated to prevent a change in the ex- change rate. Theory provides less clear-cut predictions as to how the volatility of interest rates could covary with the extent of ex-
- 7. 384 QUARTERLY JOURNALOFECONOMICS change rateflexibility. Interest rates could fluctuate considerably if the monetary authorities actively use interest rate policy as a means of stabilizing the exchange rate-an issue that we will explore more formally in a simple setting in the next section. But policy is only a partial source of interest rate volatility. Interest rates are bound to be volatile if expectations about future infla- tion or exchange rate changes are unanchored, as is the case when the authorities lack credibility. Hence, the likelihood of observing relatively large fluctuations in interest rates would depend on both the degree of credibility and on the policymakers' reaction function. While we also consider other statistical exercises in Section IV, examining the probabilities that the variable of interest stays within a prespecified band has some definite advantages over alternative descriptive statistics. First, it avoids the problem of outliers that can distort variances. For example, it is not uncom- mon in this sample (particularly for countries with capital con- trols or in the earlier part of the sample) to have a crawling peg exchange rate for an extended period of time (hence, some degree of exchange rate flexibility), with some periodic large devalua- tions (upward of 100 percent is not unusual) and return to a crawl. Brazil in the 1970s is a good example of this type of policy.5 Short-lived inflationary spikes create similar problems for inter- est rates. Second, the probabilistic nature of the statistic conveys information about the underlying frequency distribution that is not apparent from the variance. II.2. Measuring Volatility: Exchange Rates and Reserves Tables I and II present evidence on the frequency distribu- tion of monthly percent changes in the exchange rate, foreign exchange reserves, and nominal money-market interest rates for recent or current exchange rate regimes that are classified as freely floating regimes and managed floaters; Appendix 1 pre- sents the comparable statistics for limited flexibility arrange- inents and peg episodes. The first column lists the country, the second the dates of the particular exchange arrangement, and the 5. As another example, the variance of the monthly exchange rate change over Pakistan's pegged episode, which ended in December 1981, was 119.42; excluding a single monthly observation (the devaluation of May 1972), the vari- ance plummets to 0.85. Some of the problems with the alternative exchange rate classification proposed by Levy Yeyati and Sturzenegger [19991 rest on their heavy reliance on second moments distorted by outliers.
- 8. FEAR OFFLOATING 385 +1~~~~ 00 00 00 t-- C) tO O 00 -I r-l U-: U-: r- CO C9 co '-i C1i --l co o ; L w t ? C Ui 't w 't c COO = w S w H 0 P i g; +I c Ct~~ ~~ Q0 N N LO N LO 00 U:C :o C9 oo U-: m t. 5 .H 6 6 o i r 6 I 4 L 4 6 6 L L o6 HI I m m m t- coct t-o tOt1L 1I.4 t~~~~~~N LOO O s C)cocomO coO N t0 licic q P( 0 0 - m m - m 0 0 m m 0 0 0 Cr'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~C 0 _ n O t I oz - I CO 4 e s > o % n n > O H H r 'HHHHH 0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ D ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ = m*0 v 4; v g A Y k | z z z v E E z; ro; > > X~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- 9. 386 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS TABLE II VOLATILITY OF SELECTEDINDICATORS IN "MANAGEDFLOATING" EXCHANGERATE REGIMES Probability that the monthly change is Greater Within a ?2.5 than ?4 percent band: percent: Nominal Exchange interest Country Period rate Reserves rate (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Bolivia January 1998-November 1999 100.0 12.5 0.0 Brazil July 1994-December 1998 94.3 51.8 25.9 Chile October 1982-November 1999 83.8 48.2 51.2 Colombia January 1979-November 1999 86.8 54.2 2.9 Egypt February 1991-December 1998 98.9 69.4 0.0 Greece January 1977-December 1997 85.3 28.9 0.7 India February 1979-November 1993 84.5 36.7 11.2 Indonesia November 1978-June 1997 99.1 41.5 5.2 Israel December 1991-November 1999 90.9 43.8 1.1 Kenya January 1998-November 1999 70.6 14.3 1.1 Korea March 1980-October 1997 97.6 37.7 0.0 Malaysia December 1992-September 1998 81.2 55.7 2.9 Mexico January 1989-November 1994 95.7 31.9 13.9 Norway January 1995-November 1999 90.2 42.3 0.0 Pakistan January 1982-November 1999 92.8 12.1 14.1 Singapore January 1988-November 1999 88.9 74.8 0 Turkey January 1980-November 1999 36.8 23.3 61.4 Uruguay January 1993-November 1999 92.0 36.5 60.1 Venezuela April 1996-November 1999 93.9 29.4 n.a. Source: International Financial Statistics, International Monetary Fund. remaining columns the relevant probability for changes in the exchange rate, international reserves, and interest rates, in that order. For exchange rates and foreign exchange reserves, our chosen threshold value is xc = 2.5 percent, which is a compara- tively narrow band. For instance, following the Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis, many European countries adopted a ? 15 per- cent band for the exchange rate. Chile, until recently, had com- parable bands. Other examples include Mexico (prior to Decem- ber 1994) which had in place an "ever-widening" band, as the lower end (appreciation) of the band was fixed and the upper
- 10. FEAR OFFLOATING 387 ceiling(depreciation) was crawling; Israel and Colombia (during 1994-1998) also had fairly wide bands.6 For the United States, for example, as shown in column (3) of Table I, there is about a 59 percent probability that the monthly US$/DM exchange rate change would fall within a relatively narrow plus/minus 2 1/2 percent band. For the US$/Y exchange rate, that probability is slightly higher, at 61 percent. By con- trast, for Bolivia, Canada, and India (all declared floaters during that period), the probability of staying within the band is around 95 percent-significantly above the benchmark of Australia, where the comparable probability is about 70 percent.5 Put in another way, there is only about a 5 percent probability in those three countries that the exchange rate will change more than 2 1/2 percent in any given month. On average, for this group of floaters, the probability that the exchange rate change is contained in this moderate plus/minus 2 1/2-percent band is over 79 percent-sig- nificantly above that for Australia, Japan, and the United States. The t-statistic for the difference in means test is 3.38 with a probability value of (0.00) under the null hypothesis of no differ- ence. By this metric, post-crisis Mexico approximates a float more closely than any of the other cases-including Canada.7 Moderate-to-large monthly fluctuations in the exchange rate are even rarer among the so-called "managed float" episodes (Table II). For Egypt and Bolivia the probability of a monthly exchange rate change greater than 2.5 percent is nil-as was the case for Indonesia and Korea up to the 1997 crisis. Even for self-proclaimed flexible-rate advocates, such as Chile and Singa- pore, the frequency distribution of their monthly exchange rate fluctuations relative to the US dollar do not vaguely resemble that of Australia, let alone the US$/DM or US$/Y. Even a casual inspection reveals that a significantly higher proportion of obser- vations falls within the 2 1/2percent band. On average, there is an 88 percent probability that managed floaters' monthly changes in the exchange rate are confined to this narrow band. This ex- change rate stability versus the US dollar (or DM if it is a 6. In a longer working paper version, we also report comparable statistics for a ? 1 percent band. 7. The variance of the monthly changes Mexican peso/US$ is about twice as large as the variance of the monthly changes in the Y/US$ exchange rate (see Calvo and Reinhart [2001]). For a study of Peru's fear of floating, see Mor6n, Gonti,and Ormento [1999], who estimate an implicit intervention band. For a discussion on East Asia's Dollar Standard, see McKinnon [2001].
- 11. 388 QUARTERLY JOURNALOFECONOMICS European country)is surprising in light of the fact that for many emerging market countries during these episodes, inflation rates were well above U. S. or German levels, terms-of-trade shocks were frequent and large, and macroeconomic fundamentals were markedly more volatile than in any of the benchmark countries. Not surprisingly, the evidence presented in Appendix 1 shows that for limited flexibility arrangements and for pegs the proba- bilities that exchange rate changes are confined to this band are even greater, at 92 and 95 percent, respectively. Hence, the ob- served behavior accords with the priors that exchange rate vari- ability is least for pegs and greatest for floaters. For the Float-Peg difference, the probability value from the means test is (0.00); for the Float-Managed, it is (0.04); for the Managed-Limited flexibil- ity, the means test of the probability value is (0.32) while for the Limited flexibility-Peg it is (0.44). Yet, we cannot glean from exchange rates alone what would have been the extent of exchange rate fluctuations in the absence of policy interventions; that is, we do not observe the counterfac- tual. To assess the extent of policy intervention to smooth out exchange rate fluctuations, we next examine the behavior of foreign exchange reserves. In principle, the variance of reserves should be zero in a pure float. In reality, however, it is not that simple, as reserves may change because of fluctuations in valua- tion and the accrual of interest earnings.8 However, even absent these, there are other factors that influence changes in reserves. First, there are "hidden" foreign exchange reserves transactions. Credit lines may be used to defend the exchange rate during periods of speculative pressures. Indeed, several European coun- tries made ample use of their lines of credit during the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) crisis of 1992-1993. Central banks may engage in derivative transactions, much along the lines of Thai- land in 1997, which borrowed dollars in the futures market, or issue debt denominated in a foreign currency, such as Brazil among others. These transactions hide the true level and varia- tion in reserves. Second, even in the absence of any "hidden" reserve transactions, countries may rely more heavily on domes- tic open market operations and interest rate changes to limit exchange rate. 8. For instance, in the case of New Zealand, reserves fluctuate due to the Treasury's management of its overseas currency debt rather than foreign ex- change market intervention. We thank Governor Brash (in personal correspon- dence) for pointing this out.
- 12. FEAR OF FLOATING389 Column (4) of Tables I and II summarizes the frequency distribution of monthly foreign exchange reserve changes (in US dollars). With the exception of the United States and the few European countries in the sample, most countries represented in Tables I and II hold most of their foreign exchange reserve hold- ings in dollar-denominated assets-hence, for this group valua- tion changes are not much of an issue.9 As Table I shows, there is about a 74 percent probability that Japan's monthly changes in foreign exchange reserves fall in a plus/minus 2.5 percent band, while for Australia the comparable probability is 50 percent. Yet, in the case of Mexico, there is only a 28 percent probability that changes in foreign exchange reserves are that small, while in the case of Bolivia that probability is even lower; note that for post- crisis Thailand there is only a 6 percent probability that reserves changes are inside the band.10 Indeed, for all other countries, large swings in foreign exchange reserves appear to be common- place, consistent with a higher extent of intervention in the foreign exchange market-relative to what is to be expected a priori from a freely floating exchange rate regime. Nor is this exclusively an emerging market phenomenon-Canada's reserve changes are about seven times as volatile as those of the United States. For the group of "floaters" the average probability (shown in the right-hand panel of Figure I) is about 34 percent-about one-half the Japan-United States average and significantly below the Australian benchmark. The difference is statistically signifi- cant. Indeed, the observed behavior of international reserves runs counter to our priors-P(AFIF, <xclPeg) < P(AFIF, <xclFloat). We find that reserve variability is highest for the "floaters" and least for the limited flexibility arrangements. This point is made starkly in the top panel of Figure I, which plots the probability that the monthly exchange rate change lies within a 2 1/2percent band (along the horizontal axis) and the probability that foreign exchange reserves change more that 2 1/2percent (along the ver- tical axis) for the four currency regimes and our three compara- tors. Two points are evident. First, the range of observed ex- 9. One may also want to construct an estimate of interest earned by the reserve holdings and adjust the reported stocks accordingly. This is work in progress. 10. So while monthly changes in the Mexican peso/TJS$ exchange rate are almost twice as variable as monthly changes in the Y/US$ rate- changes in Mexico's reserves are 18 times as volatile as changes in U. S. reserves and 25 times as variable as changes in Japan's reserves and more than four times as volatile as Argentina's reserves.
- 13. 390 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS Exchange rates and international reserves Averaged across exchange rate regimes 70 - Float * Peg 60 Managed co (I,0) Limited e 50- Australia 40- .s United States = 30- *Japan 20- l l 50 60 70 80 90 100 Pr(Change in exchange rate < 2.5%) Exchange rates and interest rates Averaged across exchange rate regimes 40- _35- * Float -30 A 25- W 20- 15 - Managed = 10- Peg C 5- United U States Japan Australia * Limited 50 60 70 80 90 100 Pr(Change in exchange rate < 2.5%) FIGURE I Source: Tables I and II and Appendix 1.
- 14. FEAR OFFLOATING 391 changerate variation is quite narrow, with all four regimes associated with a higher chance of changing in a narrow band than any of the three benchmarks. Second, the smoothness in the exchange rate seems to be the result of explicit policy choice: international reserves move more from month to month for those countries with the more stable exchange rates. 1.3. Interest Rate Volatility, Lack of Credibility, and Monetary Policy As discussed earlier, policy intervention to dampen exchange rate fluctuations is not limited to purchases and sales of foreign exchange. Interest rates in the United States, Japan, Australia, and other developed economies are usually set with domestic considerations in mind. Yet, in many of the other countries in our sample, the authorities who set domestic interest rates accord a much higher weight to the stabilization of the exchange rate- particularly when there are credibility problems or a high pass- through from exchange rates to prices. This is also the case for countries which have inflation targets and have a high pass- through from exchange rates to prices, which is the case we model in Section III. For evidence that pass-through tends to be higher for emerging markets, see Calvo and Reinhart [2001]. This policy, coupled with credibility problems, may help explain the high relative volatility of interest rates in these countries. As shown in Table I, while the probability that interest rates change by 400 basis points (4 percent) or more on any given month is about zero for Australia, Japan, and the United States, that probability is close to 40 percent for Mexico and about 30 percent for Peru and India (among the floaters). Nominal and real interest rates in India are about four times as variable as in the United States; for Mexico, interest rates are about twenty times as variable-Peru holds the record.11 A recent example of Chile and Mexico's use of high interest rates as a means to limit exchange rate pressures (despite a markedly slowing economy and an adverse terms-of- trade shock) comes from the aftermath of the Russian crisis in August 1998. At the time of this writing, Brazil's central bank hiked interest rates in the midst of a recession and an energy crisis to halt the slide of its currency, the real. These examples, however, are not unique in emerging mar- kets. Among the managed floaters (Table II), other emerging 11. See Calvo and Reinhart [20001 for details.
- 15. 392 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS markets, including Brazil, Turkey, and Uruguay have an equally high or higher incidence of large fluctuations in interest rates. While in the case of Turkey and Uruguay, it is at least partially due to their comparatively high inflation rates, this is not the case for the others. The picture painted by the volatility of real ex post interest rates is quite similar.12 When comparing the four types of exchange rate regimes, interest rates are the most stable for the limited flexibility group-which is almost exclusively made up of European devel- oped countries-and least stable for the managed floating group, which is comprised predominantly of developing countries.13 In- deed, Calvo and Reinhart [2001] show that the variance of inter- est rates in low inflation in emerging markets is about four times that of developed economies, and that gap is far greater for countries with a history of inflation. Moreover, such interest volatility is not the result of adher- ing to strict monetary targets in the face of large and frequent money demand shocks. In reality, most of these countries do not have explicit or implicit money supply rules. Interest rate vola- tility would appear to be the byproduct of a combination of trying to stabilize the exchange rate through domestic open market operations and lack of credibility. These findings are summarized in the lower panel of Figure I, which plots the relative probabil- ities of small changes in the exchange rate (again, along the horizontal axis) and large changes in the nominal interest rate (the vertical axis). As is evident, the countries that move their interest rates the most are those that, by self-identification, would seem to have to move them the least-those that follow a float or a managed float. II4. General Observations about the Findings In this section we have presented evidence that the variabil- ity in international reserves and interest rates is high relative to the variations in the exchange rate. Taken together, these find- ings would suggest that in many cases the authorities are at- tempting to stabilize the exchange rate through both direct in- tervention in the foreign exchange market and open market 12. See the working paper version of this paper. 13. It is important to note that some countries with a highly regulated financial sector and limited capital mobility simultaneously show exchange rate and interest rate stability; examples include Egypt, India (in the earlier managed floating period), Kenya, and Nigeria.
- 16. FEAROFFLOATING 393 operations. Furthermore,"fear of floating" does not appear to be limited to a particular region. Indeed, it would appear that in emerging markets floating has been largely confined to brief periods following currency crises or chaotic episodes of high in- flation-an issue we examine in greater detail in Section IV. In the next section we develop a simple framework that replicates these stylized facts and provides a rationale for fear of floating. III. INFLATIONTARGETING, LACK OF CREDIBILITY, AND FEAR OF FLOATING There are multiple reasons why countries may be reluctant to tolerate much variation in their exchange rates.14 Liability dollarization, which is pervasive in emerging markets, may pro- duce a fear of floating. In Lahiri and Vegh's [2001] model, fear of floating arises because there is an output cost associated with exchange rate fluctuations; in the Caballero and Krishnamurthy [2001] setting, an inelastic supply of external funds at times of crises explains exchange rate overshooting and fear of floating. Calvo and Reinhart [2001] stress concerns about lack of credibil- ity and loss of access to international capital markets. In this paper we present a simple model where fear of float- ing arises from the combination of lack of credibility (as mani- fested in large and frequent risk-premiums shocks), a high pass- through from exchange rates to prices, and inflation targeting. It is worth pointing out that lack of credibility in this setting is not manifested in first moments. Lack of credibility is associated with the (higher) variance of the risk premiums shocks. This setting is motivated by the recent trend in emerging markets to couple floating with explicit inflation targets. Indeed, at present, this combination appears to have become the most popular alterna- tive to fixing the exchange rate.15 Explanations of a central bank's choice of the expansion of nominal magnitudes have often been framed as some variant of 14. See also Hausmann, Panizza, and Stein [2001]. 15. Inflation targeters include Australia (September 1994), Brazil (June 1999), Canada (February 1991), Colombia (September 1999), Czech Republic (January 1998), Finland (February 1993-June 1998), Israel (January 1992), South Korea (January 1998), Switzerland (January 2000), Mexico (January 1999), New Zealand (March 1990), Peru (January 1994), Poland (October 1998), South Africa (February 2000), Spain (November 1994-June 1998), Sweden (January 1993), Thailand (April 2000), and United Kingdom (October 1992). The dates in parentheses, which indicate when inflation targeting was introduced, highlight that for most of the emerging markets the policy change is relatively recent.
- 17. 394 QUARTERLY JOURNALOFECONOMICS Barro andGordon's [1983] rules-versus-discretion model, whether allowing for uncertainty (as in Canzoneri [1985]), hetero- geneity among potential central bankers (as in Rogoff [1985]), or even electoral choice among central bankers (as in Alesina and Grilli [1992]). Policy is cast as attempting to reconcile the long- run benefits of low inflation with the temptation to get extra output in the near term by generating an inflation surprise that works through a Phillips curve. It could be argued that a formulation that describes discre- tionary monetary policy as attempting to exploit a Phillips curve is of little practical relevance for most emerging markets. A history of high and variable inflation in many emerging markets has eroded any meaningful trade-off between unemployment and inflation surprises. Furthermore, even in the absence of a noto- rious inflation history, the evidence suggests that monetary pol- icy is often procyclical-as central banks raise interest rates in bad states of nature to restore investor confidence and stem capital outflows. Yet, this does not imply that the central bank is indifferent to inflation surprises. Indeed, in many emerging mar- kets there has been a tendency to use inflation surprises to improve the government's fiscal position. Overreliance on the inflation tax (and other easy-to-implement taxes, such as tariffs) may be due to the fact that in many emerging markets tax collection is inefficient and evasion is rampant. That is, the bene- fits to the monetary authority are that surprise inflation gener- ates additional revenue from money creation and erodes the real value of nominal government debt and public sector wages. It could also be argued that the focus on a closed economy controlling the domestic inflation rate limits the seeming rele- vance of Barro-Gordon models for many developed and emerging market countries alike. In fact, central bankers in emerging mar- ket economies appear to be extremely mindful of external factors in general and the foreign exchange value of their currency, in particular. In what follows, the policy choice explicitly considers the problem of a small open economy setting its nominal interest rate. Consider one period of an infinitely lived sequence.16 House- holds make two sets of decisions at the start of the period based on incomplete information; that is, before shocks are realized. As workers, they bargain for nominal wages that will prevail over 16. We will suppress time subscripts where possible.
- 18. FEAROFFLOATING 395 the periodin anticipation that goods and service price inflation will equal T'F. As investors, they place part of their assets at banks in deposits that do not bear interest, implying an opportu- nity cost that is expected to be iP, the market-based return on domestic government debt. Foreign investors also hold domestic debt, with the home interest rate linked to the foreign interest rate it, by uncovered interest parity. Defining s to be the price of foreign currency in terms of domestic currency so that when s rises (falls), the home currency depreciates (appreciates). If e is the expected rate of change in the exchange rate, then the uncovered interest parity condition holds up to a risk premium p: (1) i = i* + e + p. The risk premium is assumed to be a random shock, drawn from a distribution with mean up= 0 and variance r2. To keep nota- tional clutter to a minimum, we will assume that the mean to the risk premium shock equals zero. From the government's perspective, the public's willingness to hold money balances must be supported by noninterest-bearing domestic reserves, issued in the amount R. Because a central bank's balance sheet must balance, these domestic reserves can also be expressed in terms of their asset counterparts, foreign exchange reserves, and domestic credit. Since the central bank can issue R, this implies that it can issue less interest-bearing obligations. This interest saving is one measure of the seigniorage from money creation, (2) i(Rlp), where p is the domestic price level.'7 Our simplification of a fractional banking system is to assume a constant money multi- plier k, so that (3) M = kR. The demand for domestic real balances is written as a linear approximation, (4) Mlp = c - -ie + where 4 represents a random shock with mean zero and variance 17. In a growing economy, seigniorage would also include the increase in real balances induced as income expands.
- 19. 4Y. As before,the assumption is that households place their balances at banks before the outcome of financial market clearing is known. Thus, the opportunity cost of holding money must be forecasted rather than known with certainty. As a consequence of this specification of the financial sector, seigniorage can be written as C - qi' + (5) i ~ k Notice the key wedge between anticipations and actions opened up in this product: seigniorage depends on both the expected interest rate (which determines the real stock of reserves) and the actual interest rate (which determines the earning rate of those reserves). We also assume that foreign and domestic goods, prices at p* and p, respectively, are perfect substitutes: (6) p =sp *, so that purchasing power parity prevails, which completes the description of economic behavior that the central bank takes as given. This, of course, implies a pass-through of unity from ex- change rate to prices. This assumption can be relaxed without altering the qualitative results of the model. Here we assume that purchasing power of parity holds for "the"relevant country in the region; if there were more currencies, the analysis could also be extended to include less-than-unit pass-through. Each period, the central bank is assumed to maximize its welfare, which is increasing in its seigniorage and decreasing in the deviation of the inflation rate from its target, with the target taken to be zero to save on notation. This welfare function can be written as (7) W = i R _b 2 p 2 where b is a coefficient representing the welfare loss (relative to one unit more of seigniorage) from inflation deviating from its target in either direction. The two parity conditions combine to explain domestic infla-
- 20. tion in termsof domestic nominal interest rates and variables from the external sector. As a result, (8) i-it-p + 7. Assuming that the foreign nominal interest rate and inflation rate equal zero, the objective function of the central bank can be written as c -lrie + b; 2 (9) W= i k -- ( - p)2 k 2 First, we find the welfare-maximizing interest rate taking expectations as given. From the first-order condition we get, (10) i = p + (C - ie + t)lbk. As is evident, in setting the nominal interest rate, the central bank responds one for one to risk premium shocks but propor- tionally to money demand shocks. The key tension that produces time inconsistency is that the central bank's desired setting of the ex post nominal interest rate depends negatively on interest rate expectations, which are formed earlier in the period. Second, on average, those expectations should be correct. This places the condition on the model that (11) ie = cI(bk + q). Even though both the real interest rate and the inflation target are zero, households will expect a positive nominal interest rate, implying that they expect some inflation. This is due to the presence of seigniorage in the objective function. The greater the weight on the inflation target, the smaller will be this inflation premium (as b -> oo,then ie > 0). It is important to note that there are two elements to this premium due to the importance of seigniorage itself in the objec- tive function and the temptation to generate surprise inflation to get extra seigniorage because money demand depends on the expected interest rate. If money demand were to depend on the actual interest rate, that second element would be eliminated, although the first alone would still produce inflation in the long
- 21. run. It canbe shown in that circumstance that the expected nominal interest rate would equal (12) c/(2rq+ bk), which is smaller than that in the baseline model. The difference between the two represents, in Rogoff's [1985] term, the premium paid to investors because the central bank succumbs to the temp- tation to cheat systematically. The irony, of course, in all these models is that systematic cheating yields no return. The representation for interest rate expectations in the base- line model can be substituted into the interest rate equation. This yields an expression for the optimal setting of the nominal inter- est rate in the presence of shocks to asset holding-namely the risk premium and money demand, (13) __ c bk bk+?q Given our assumption that the shocks are uncorrelated, the vari- ance of the domestic nominal interest rate is given by (14) (Ti= Tp2 + a kb22. Note that the variance of the nominal interest rate declines as the commitment to the inflation target rises (b is larger) but in- creases when credibility is low; that is, when the variance of risk premium shocks are large. Emerging markets are routinely buf- feted by large swings in risk premiums. This is evident, for example, in the volatility of emerging market sovereign credit ratings (see Reinhart [2001]). But still, even under an extreme commitment to an inflation target, nominal interest rates will vary as the central bank finds it optimal to offset risk premium shocks. The other variables of interest follow directly. The expected change in the exchange rate will be, i - p, or c (15) bk+ bk?+ That is, in setting its nominal interest rate, the central bank will completely offset the effects on the exchange rate of foreign risk premium shocks and partially offset money demand shocks. The
- 22. greater the importanceof the inflation target, the greater will be the offset of money demand shocks. As a result, the variance of the change in the exchange rate can be written as (16) 2/b2k2 Because risk premium shocks are offset completely, the variance of the exchange rate is independent of the variance of the risk premium. Moreover, the greater the commitment to an inflation target, the smaller will be the variance of the change in the exchange rate. Hence, in this setting inflation targeting can ex- plain fear of floating. The real domestic monetary base will equal R cb (17) R e p bk + ? k The level of real balances increases directly with the weight on inflation, in that a stronger commitment to low inflation gener- ates a greater willingness to hold real balances. Real reserves also vary one for one with the money demand shock but are invariant to the risk premium shock. The reason, of course, that real reserves are invariant to the risk premium shock is that the decision by domestic investors to hold money balances depends on the expected, not actual, domestic interest rate. Given this, the variance of the real monetary base will equal (18) uR%p=t2lk . As Calvo and Guidotti [1993] point out, the cost of discretionary policy is due to its effect on expectations, which induce house- holds to change their behavior regarding real magnitudes. The cost of a policy that alters expectations has to be weighed against the possibility of reducing the variance of real magnitudes by offsetting shocks realized after expectations are formed. In our framework, smoothing the exchange rate reduces the variation in real outcomes. Offsetting risk premium shocks and thereby damping fluctuations in the exchange rate limits unnecessary variations in domestic inflation. For an inflation targeter, this may be an end that appears particularly attractive. It is useful to define a variance ratio that captures the varia-
- 23. tion in theexchange rate relative to policy instruments-the domestic nominal interest rate and reserves-a form of exchange rate flexibility index. In particular, (19) A- rlI(4i + a2 In this model, this term reduces to 2 (20) t ~~~~< 1. (20) (1 + b2)cr2+ b2k2Cr2< Note that this variance ratio goes to one as the weight on the inflation target declines. Conversely, as the weight on the infla- tion target increases, the variance ratio tends to zero. In the next section we examine the empirical relevance of this issue by con- trasting the readings of the variance ratio given by equation (19) with the actual inflation performance for the various exchange rate arrangement episodes in our sample. IV. AN EXCHANGE RATEFLEXIBILITY INDEX: BAsIc TESTSANDCOMPARISONS We begin this section by conducting some basic tests to as- sess the extent of foreign exchange market intervention (as mea- sured by variability in foreign exchange reserves) in the 155 episodes that make up our study. We then proceed to construct an exchange rate flexibility index, along the lines suggested by the model in Section III. In both of these exercises, we compare those cases classified as floaters and managed floaters to the bench- mark of the committed floaters (here taken to be Australia, Ja- pan, and the United States). IV.]. F-tests As noted in Section II, with regard to exchange rates, interest rates, and other nominal variables in the local currency, outliers can significantly distort the variances of some of these variables. In the case of international reserves, which are reported in dol- lars and are less affected by periodic mega-devaluations or infla- tionary spikes, the outlier problem is somewhat less severe. Hence, in what follows, our emphasis will be on the variability of international reserves-although in the next subsection we con- struct a flotation index that is multivariate, as it includes the variances of the exchange rate and an interest rate.
- 24. FEAR OFFLOATING 401 TABLEIII PROPORTION OF CASES WHERE THE VOLATILITY OF RESERVES SIGNIFICANTLY EXCEEDS THAT OF THE BENCHMARK COUNTRY: SUMMARY OF THE F-TESTS Regime according to Number of Benchmark is IMF classification cases Australia Japan United States Peg 70 81.4 95.7 92.9 Limited flexibility 11 72.7 100 90.9 Managed floating 43 76.2 88.4 88.4 Floating 31 73.3 97.3 87.1 All 155 77.8 93.5 90.9 The alternative hypothesis, if fear of floating is present, is that the variance in reserves for count7 and episode I is greater than that for the benchmark country, b. Denoting the variance of reserves by c1?,the alternative hypothesis is thus, uRi > (rRb. The individual case-by-case results of the F-tests are available from the authors upon request. As to the F-tests, the null hypothesis being tested is the equality of variances between the committed floaters and the particular country/episode in question; the alternative hypothesis is that, if there is fear of floating, the variance of reserves for the episode in question will exceed that of the more committed float- ers serving as a benchmark. Hence, it is a one-tailed test. The results of the F-tests are summarized in Table III.18 If the Aus- tralian benchmark is used, in those episodes classified as floaters, the null hypothesis of the equality of variances in favor of the alternative hypothesis (consistent with the fear of floating phe- nomenon) is rejected in 73 percent of the cases. If, instead, Japan is used as a benchmark, the null hypothesis can be rejected for 97 percent of the cases. For the managed floaters, there is a similarly high incidence of rejection of the null hypothesis. In effect, in the majority of cases, the variance of foreign exchange reserves is several orders of magnitude greater than for Australia, Japan, or the United States. It is also noteworthy that the results of these tests reveal that rejection of the null hypothesis is not appreciably different for the floaters than for those with fixed exchange rates or more limited flexibility arrangements. While on the surface this result seems paradoxical, it is consistent with both a high incidence of fear of floating among the group classified as floaters 18. The individual country and episode (there are 155 of these) results are available in the background material to this paper at www.puaf.umd.edu/papers/ reinhart.htm.
- 25. and a higherincidence of capital controls among the fixers. If binding, the controls can help stabilize the exchange rate without the need for large fluctuations in international reserves. IV.2. An Exchange Rate Flexibility Index As discussed above, there is no single all-encompassing indi- cator that provides an adequate measure of the extent of ex- change rate flexibility allowed by the monetary authorities. Yet from the model developed in Section III, we can motivate the construction of a multivariate index that captures different mani- festations of the extent of exchange rate variability relative to the variability of the instruments that are at the disposal of the monetary authorities to stabilize the exchange rate. As noted earlier, domestic reserves R can also be expressed in terms of their asset counterparts, which includes foreign ex- change reserves F. As the results of the F-tests attest, reserve variability is significantly higher for the less committed floaters than for the benchmark countries. Furthermore, it is well-known that foreign exchange market intervention is commonplace in many of the cases studied here. For this reason, in the empirical application of the model, we focus on a variance ratio that looks at the central bank balance sheet from the asset side, implying that equation (19) should be modified to (21) A - a,2Gru + cF2). The values Xcan range from zero, when there is a peg or a very high degree of commitment to inflation targeting, to one when seignorage has a high weight in the policymaker's objective func- tion. As shown in Table IV, in about 83 percent of the cases the index of exchange rate flexibility is below that of Australia-for Japan and the United States the share of cases below these two benchmarks is 95 and 90, respectively. When we disaggregate the ?advanced economies from the emerging market countries, no obvious differences emerge on the proportion of cases that lie below and above the three benchmarks. Separating the two groups does shed light on the "causes" behind the high readings. For the advanced economies, there is no obvious link between a high flexibility index reading and high inflation or rising infla- tion, as is usually the case following a currency crisis. For emerg- ing markets, however, between 66 and 93 percent of the cases
- 26. TABLE IV PROBABILITIES OF "FLOATING" INCOMPARISON TO THE BENCHMARKCOUNTRY: A COMPOSITEINDEX OF EXCHANGERATE FLEXIBILITY Benchmark is Proportion of total cases where Australia Japan United States All countries Index is below benchmark 83.0 95.0 90.0 Index is above benchmark 17.0 5.0 10.0 Advanced economies Index is below benchmark 78.0 100.0 90.0 Index is above benchmark 22.0 0.0 10.0 Of which: high inflation: 30 percent cutoff 0.0 0.0 0.0 Of which: post-crisis 0.0 0.0 0.0 Emerging market economies Index is below benchmark 85.7 91.4 90.0 Index is above benchmark 14.3 8.6 10.0 Of which: high inflation 33.0 42.9 42.9 Of which: post-crisis 30.0 50.0 42.9 Source: The authors. The indices for the individual country episodes are not reported here to economize on space but are available at www.puaf.umd.edu/papers/reinhart.htm. The high inflation cutoff is 30 percent or higher during the episode in question; this is in keeping with the threshold used by Easterly [1998] and others. For, the United States, the index uses the US$/DM (subsequently euro) exchange rate; very similar results obtain if the US dollar/yen exchange rate is used. a. Another 22 percent of the cases above the Australian benchmark were accounted for by the G-3 countries. (depending on whether the Australia or Japan benchmark is used) recording a "higher degree of variability" either had infla- tion rates above 30 percent per annum or the period in question is immediately following a currency crisis. This finding is broadly consistent with the model's predictions that the higher the weight placed on seignorage relative to the inflation target, the more variable the exchange rate relative to the instruments of policy, as the shocks to the risk premiums will not be offset to the same degree if the commitment to an inflation target is not binding. Furthermore, the mode index level for emerging markets is well below the mode for the advanced economies group. This is also in line with the predictions of the model. The variance of nominal interest rates is determined on a one-to-one basis by the
- 27. variance of riskpremium shocks, a2 (equation (14))-as discussed earlier, risk premiums are far more volatile in emerging markets than in developed economies. V. CONCLUDINGREMARKS Announcements of intentions to float, to be sure, are not new. The Philippines announced it would float on January 1988, yet less than ten years later, following its 1997 currency crises, its exchange rate policy would be lumped together with the rest of the affected Asian countries, under the commonly used (but ill- defined) label of a "soft peg." Bolivia announced it would float on September 1985, because of its hyperinflation-despite this an- nouncement its exchange rate so closely tracked the United States dollar that the regime was reclassified as a managed float on January 1998. Korea and Thailand, despite their relatively new floating status, seem to amass reserves at every possible opportunity. 19 While these episodes provide anecdotal evidence that coun- tries may be reluctant to allow their currencies to float, the systematic evidence presented in this paper suggests that the fear of floating phenomenon is, indeed, widespread and cuts across regions and levels of development. Fear of floating-or more generally, fear of large currency swings-is pervasive for a variety of reasons, particularly among emerging market coun- tries. The supposedly disappearing middle account makes up the predominant share of country practices. Indeed, one of the hard- est challenges trying to draw lessons from the experiences of countries that are at the corners is that there are so few to study. The experiences of some of the floaters like the United States and Japan may not be particularly relevant for developing countries. Similarly, the number of countries with hard pegs is so small (excluding small islands) that it is difficult to generalize. We have presented evidence in this paper that, when it comes to exchange rate policy, the middle has not disappeared. Yet, there is an apparent change in the conduct of monetary-exchange rate policy in many emerging markets-interest rate policy is (at least partially) replacing foreign exchange intervention as the 19. Of course, one interpretation of these developments is that, burned by the liquidity shortage faced during the 1997-1998 crisis, these countries are seeking to build a "war chest" of international reserves in order to avoid having similar problems in the future.
- 28. preferred means ofsmoothing exchange rate fluctuations. This is evident in the high variability of interest rates in developing economies and in the practices of countries like Mexico and Peru. The use of interest rate policy to smooth exchange rate fluctua- tions has received considerable attention in recent years; see, for example, Lahiri and Vegh [2000] and references therein. Our finding that so many of the episodes that come under the heading of floating exchange rates look similar to many of the explicit less flexible exchange rate arrangements may help ex- plain why earlier studies, which relied on the official classifica- tions of regimes, failed to detect important differences in GDP growth rates and inflation, across peg and the floating regimes.20 In sum, economic theory provides us with well-defined dis- tinctions between fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes, but we are not aware of any criteria that allow us to discriminate as to when a managed float starts to look like a soft peg. Indeed, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that it is often quite difficult to distinguish between the two. On the basis of the empirical evidence, perhaps, all that we can say is that, when it comes to exchange rate policy, discretion rules the day. DATA APPENDIX: DEFINITIONS AND SOURCES This appendix describes the data used in this study and their sources. IFS refers to the International Monetary Fund's Inter- national Financial Statistics. 1. Exchange rates. Monthly end-of-period bilateral exchange rates are used. For the European countries it is bilateral exchange rates versus the deutsche mark, except pre- 1973, where it is bilateral rates versus the US dollar. For selected African countries (as noted) bilateral exchange rates versus the French franc are used, while for the remaining countries, which constitute the majority, it is bilateral rates versus the US dollar. We focus on monthly percent changes. Source: IFS line ae. 2. Reserves. Gross foreign exchange reserves minus gold. As with exchange rates, we use monthly percent changes. Source: IFS line 1L.d. 20. See, for instance, Baxter and Stockman [1989], Ghosh, Gulde, Ostry, and Wolf [1997], and Edwards and Savastano [2000] for a review of this literature.
- 29. 406 QUARTERLY JOURNALOFECONOMICS 3. Nominalinterest rates. Where possible, policy interest rates were used. As these vary by country, the table below summarizes for each country which interest rate series is used and its source. 4. Real ex post interest rates. The nominal interest rates listed above, deflated using consumer prices (IFS line 64), expressed in percentage points. The real interest rate is given by 100 x [((1 + it)ptlpt+l 1, where I is the nomi- nal interest rate and p are consumer prices. Country Interest rate series used IMF/IFScode Argentina Interbank 60B Australia Interbank 60B Bolivia Deposit 60L Brazil Interbank 60B Canada Interbank 60B Chile Deposit 60L Colombia Discount 60 Egypt Discount 60 France Interbank 60B Germany Interbank 60B Greece T-bill 60C India Interbank 60B Indonesia Interbank 60B Israel T-bill 60C IvoryCoast Discount 60 Japan Interbank 60B Kenya T-bill 60C Malaysia Interbank 60B Mexico Interbank 60B New Zealand Interbank 60B Nigeria T-bill 60C Norway Interbank 60B Pakistan Interbank 60B Peru Discount 60 Philippines T-bill 60C Singapore Interbank 60B South Africa Interbank 60B South Korea Interbank 60B Spain Interbank 60B Sweden Interbank 60B Thailand Interbank 60B Uganda T-bill 60C United States Federalfunds 60B Uruguay Discount 60 Venezuela Discount 60
- 30. FEAR OFFLOATING 407 APPENDIX1: VOLATILITY OF SELECTED INDICATORS IN "LIMITED FLEXIBILITY AND FIXED" EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES Probability that the monthly percent change is Greater Within a +2.5 percent than ?4 band: percent: Nominal Exchange interest Country Period rate Reserves rate "Limited flexibility" France March 1979-November 1999 97.5 54.9 0.8 Greece January 1998-November 1999 80.0 31.3 0.0 Malaysia January 1986-February 1990 98.1 35.9 3.9 Spain June 1989-November 1999 92.4 64.7 0.0 Sweden June 1985-October 1992 92.1 39.3 3.4 "Fixed" Argentina March 1991-November 1999 100.0 36.7 18.4 Bulgaria June 1997-November 1999 93.1 48.2 3.57 Cote D'Ivoire January 1970-November 1999 99.4 8.7 0.0 Estonia June 1992-November 1999 100.0 32.6 5.7 Kenya January 1970-September 1993 85.6 20.8 1.5 Lithuania April 1994-November 1999 100.0 37.3 19.4 Malaysia March 1990-November 1992 96.9 39.4 0.0 Nigeria April 1993-November 1999 98.6 8.9 1.4 Norway December 1978-November 1992 86.8 35.1 6.5 Singapore January 1983-December 1987 96.6 83.3 0.0 Thailand January 1970-June 1997 98.5 50.2 2.4 Recent pegs episodes with few monthly observations are Malaysia in September 1998 and Egypt in January 1999. Source: Interniiational Financial Statistics, International Monetary Fund. INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK AND UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND REFERENCES Alesina, Alberto, and Vittorio Grilli, "The European Central Bank: Reshaping Monetary Politics in Europe," in Establishing a Central Bank: Issues in Europe and Lessons from the U. S., M. Canzoneri, V. Grilli, and P. Masson, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 49-77. Barro, Robert J., and David Gordon, "Rules, Discretion and Reputation in a Model of Monetary Policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, XII (1983), 101-122. Baxter, Marianne, and Alan C. Stockman, "Business Cycles and the Exchange- Rate Regime: Some International Evidence," Journal of Monetai-y Economics, XXIII (1989), 377-400. Caballero, Ricardo, and Arvind Krishnamurthy, "A "Vertical" Analysis of Crises
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