IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgif/334.html

Devaluation, exchange controls, and black markets for foreign exchange in developing countries

Author

Listed:
  • Steven B. Kamin

Abstract

This paper considers how exchange controls, black markets, and forward-looking expectations condition the impact of exchange rate devaluations in developing countries. A model incorporating these features is developed to analyze the response of key external balance indicators to anticipated devaluations. The model is driven by the movements of black market exchange rates in perfect foresight equilibrium, which in turn force changes in export under-invoicing and official trade statistics. The predicted movements in all measurable variables, both before and after devaluation, closely mirror those historically associated with devaluation episodes. The analysis is then extended to the case of 'devaluation cycles' to examine the paths of the black market rate and official trade statistics in the face of persistent inflation which over-values the real exchange rate and motivates periodic devaluations. Statistical analysis of a multi-devaluation data set strongly supports some of the most important predictions of the model: black market exchange rates typically depreciate in response to official devaluation, and all else equal, increases in the black market rate reduce official measures of dollar value exports.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven B. Kamin, 1988. "Devaluation, exchange controls, and black markets for foreign exchange in developing countries," International Finance Discussion Papers 334, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:334
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1988/334/default.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1988/334/ifdp334.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:scandj:v:78:y:1976:i:2:p:280-304 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Krugman, Paul, 1979. "A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 11(3), pages 311-325, August.
    3. Rudiger Dornbusch & Daniel Valente Dantas & Clarice Pechman & Roberto de Rezende Rocha & Demetrio SimÅes, 1983. "The Black Market for Dollars in Brazil," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(1), pages 25-40.
    4. Flood, Robert P. & Garber, Peter M., 1984. "Collapsing exchange-rate regimes : Some linear examples," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 1-13, August.
    5. Jagdish N. Bhagwati, 1978. "Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development: Anatomy and Consequences of Exchange Control Regimes," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bhag78-1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steven B. Kamin, 1990. "Contractionary devaluation with black markets for foreign exchange," International Finance Discussion Papers 370, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Guillermo Javier Vúletin, 2002. "Regímenes Cambiarios y Performance Fiscal ¿Generan los Regímenes Fijos Mayor Disciplina que los Flexibles?," Department of Economics, Working Papers 042, Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    3. Kiguel, Miguel A. & O'Connell, Stephen A., 1994. "Parallel exchange rates in developing countries : lessons from eight case studies," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1265, The World Bank.
    4. Sebastian Edwards, 2002. "Does the Current Account Matter?," NBER Chapters, in: Preventing Currency Crises in Emerging Markets, pages 21-76, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Guillermo J. Vuletin, 2004. "Exchange Rate Regimes And Fiscal Performance. Do Fixed Exchange Rate Regimes Generate More Discipline Than Flexible Ones?," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 474, Econometric Society.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kang, Hyunju, 2013. "Behind the scenes of abandoning a fixed exchange rate regime," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 3145-3156.
    2. Chanelle Duley & Prasanna Gai, 2020. "When the penny doesn't drop - Macroeconomic tail risk and currency crises," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 520, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    3. Stijn Claessens & M. Ayhan Kose, 2013. "Financial Crises: Explanations, Types and Implications," CAMA Working Papers 2013-06, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    4. Müller-Plantenberg, Nikolas A., 2010. "Balance of payments accounting and exchange rate dynamics," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 46-63, January.
    5. Mohammad Karimi & Marcel‐Cristian Voia, 2019. "Empirics of currency crises: A duration analysis approach," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 428-449, July.
    6. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira & Lauro Gonzalez & Cláudio Lucinda, 2008. "Crises financeiras nos anos 1990 e poupança externa [Financial crises of the 1990s and current account deficits]," Nova Economia, Economics Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), vol. 18(3), pages 327-357, September.
    7. Joshua Aizenman & Brian Pinto, 2013. "Managing Financial Integration and Capital Mobility—Policy Lessons from the Past Two Decades," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 636-653, September.
    8. Craig Burnside, 2004. "The Research Agenda: Craig Burnside on the Causes and Consequences of Twin Banking-Currency Crises," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(2), April.
    9. Debabrata Datta & Susmita Chatterjee, 2013. "A Simple Model of Macroeconomic Instability in the Background of the Indian Economy," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 2(1), pages 81-106, June.
    10. Nakatani, Ryota, 2017. "Structural vulnerability and resilience to currency crisis: Foreign currency debt versus export," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 132-143.
    11. Sylvain Barthélémy & Virginie Gautier & Fabien Rondeau, 2024. "Early warning system for currency crises using long short‐term memory and gated recurrent unit neural networks," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 1235-1262, August.
    12. Barthélémy, Sylvain & Gautier, Virginie & Rondeau, Fabien, 2026. "Convolutional neural networks to signal currency crises: From the Asian financial crisis to the Covid crisis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    13. Miller, Victoria, 1996. "Speculative currency attacks with endogenously induced commercial bank crises," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 383-403, June.
    14. repec:boz:journl:v:25:y:2011:i:1:p:139-169 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Daniel, Betty C., 2000. "The timing of exchange rate collapse," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 765-784, December.
    16. Komulainen, Tuomas, 2001. "Currency crises in emerging markets : Capital flows and herding behaviour," BOFIT Discussion Papers 10/2001, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    17. Ahec Šonje, Amina & Babić, Ante, 2002. "Measuring and predicting currency disturbances in Croatia: the “signals” approach," MPRA Paper 83137, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Apr 2002.
    18. Della Posta, Pompeo, 2016. "Currency and external debt crises: A unifying framework," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 723-736.
    19. Maurice Obstfeld, 1995. "Intenational Currency Experience: New Lessons and Lessons Relearned," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(1, 25th A), pages 119-220.
    20. Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2001. "Prospective Deficits and the Asian Currency Crisis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1155-1197, December.
    21. Alexis Cruz Rodriguez, 2011. "Prediction of Currency Crises Using a Fiscal Sustainability Indicator," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 26(2), pages 39-60, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:334. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.