Fixed Rate Programs
In a fixed exchange rate system, the monetary authority picks rates of exchange with each other currency and commits to adjusting the money supply, restricting exchange transactions and adjusting other variables to ensure that the exchange rates do not move. All variations on fixed rates reduce the time inconsistency problem and reduce exchange rate volatility, albeit to different degrees.
Under dollarization/Euroization, the US dollar or the Euro acts as legal tender in a different country. Dollarization is a summary description of the use of foreign currency in its capacity to produce all types of money services in the domestic economy. Monetary policy is delegated to the anchor country. Under dollarization exchange rate movements cannot buffer external shocks. The money supply in the dollarizing country is limited to what it can earn via exports, borrow and receive from emigrant remittances.
A currency board enables governments to manage their external credibility problems and discipline their central banks by “tying their hands” with binding arrangements. A currency board combines three elements: an exchange rate that is fixed to another, “anchor currency”; automatic convertibility or the right to exchange domestic currency at this fixed rate whenever desired; and a long-term commitment to the system. A currency board system can ultimately be credible only if central bank holds official foreign exchange reserves sufficient to at least cover the entire monetary base. Exchange rate movements cannot buffer external shocks.
A fixed peg system fixes the exchange rate against a single currency or a currency basket. The time inconsistency problem is reduced through commitment to a verifiable target. However, the availability of a devaluation option provides a policy tool for handling large shocks. Its potential drawbacks are that it provides a target for speculative attacks, avoids exchange rate volatility, but not necessarily persistent misalignments, does not by itself place hard constraints on monetary and fiscal policy and that the credibility effect depends on accompanying institutional measures and a visible record of accomplishment.
Read more about this topic: Exchange-rate Flexibility
Famous quotes containing the words fixed, rate and/or programs:
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty—excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable—should persist after the beauty was gone.”
—Mary A. [Elizabeth, Countess Von] Arnim (1866–1941)
“Government ... thought [it] could transform the country through massive national programs, but often the programs did not work. Too often they only made things worse. In our rush to accomplish great deeds quickly, we trampled on sound principles of restraint and endangered the rights of individuals.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)