Speculative Attack and the External Constraint in a Maximizing Model of the Balance of Payments

This paper analyzes inevitable transitions between fixed and floating exchange-rate regimes in a balance-of-payments model where individual preferences are explicitly specified. The goal is to assessthe analogy between speculative attacks in foreign exchange markets and attacks on official price-fixing schemes in natural resource markets. In discrete time the analogy with resource markets is only partially correct, for in a deterministic model the collapse of a fixed rate may be characterized by two, successive attacks. The two-attack equilibriumis peculiar to discrete-time analysis, however. In the continuous-time limit of discrete-time models there is a single attack timed so as to rule out an anticipated discrete jump in the exchange rate.Balance-of-payments models differ from nonrenewable resource models in that foreign exchange reserves may be borrowed from abroad.The paper therefore asks whether there are limits to central-bank borrowing possibilities. In an idealized world where all private incomeis subject to lump-sum taxation, central-bank reserves can become infinitely negative with no violation of the public sector's intertemporal budget constraint. Nonetheless, a growth rate of domestic credit exceeding the world interest rate, if maintained indefinitely, leads to violation of the constraint in the paper's model.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)