Capital Markets and the Exchange Rate with Special Reference to the Dollarization Debate in Latin America

The paper reviews the main challenges faced by policymakers in emerging market economies, EM, in light of recent financial crises, and taking into account salient factors like the existence of partial dollarization, imperfect credibility, weak financial systems, and contagion. The standard theory of optimal currency areas is discussed and criticized for omitting the above factors. When these factors are taken into account, an extreme foreign exchange regime like dollarization is shown to become much more attractive. The paper discusses the pros and cons of dollarization and, among other things, shows that the lack of a lender of last resort is not necessarily a major drawback in EM. The paper also discusses inflation targeting, IT. In a formal model, it is shown that IT could be subject to credibility problems similar to those found in exchange rate-based stabilization programs.