Avoiding some costs of inflation and crawling toward hyperinflation : the case of the Brazilian domestic currency substitute

The pattem of a classical hyperinflation is an acute acceleration of the inflation levei accompanied by rapid substitution away from domestic currency. Brazil, however, has becn experiencing inflation leveis well above 1,000% a year since 1988 without entering the classical hyperinflation path. Two elements play key roles in differcntiating the Brazilian case from other hyperinflationary experiences: indexation and the provision of a reliable domestic currency substitute, Le., the provision of liquidity to interest-bearing assets. This paper claims that the existence of this domestic currency substitute is lhe main source of both lhe inability of the Brazilian central bank to fight inflation and of the unwillingness of Brazilians to face the costs of such a fight. The provision of the domestic currency substitute through the banking sector is modeled, and the main macroeconomic consequences of this monetary regime are derived. Those are: the lack of a nominal anchor for the price system due to the passive monetary policy; the endogeneity of seignorage unlikc traditional models of hyperinflation; and lhe ineffectiveness of very high real interest rates.

Substituição de moedas, restrição orcamentária do setor público e o câmbio

Discorre sobre a instabilidade do câmbio e o colapso do regime cambial do tipo crawling peg, provocado pelo desequilíbrio não sustentável do orçamento do setor público e pelo grau de substituirão de moedas. Enfatiza as condições de sustentabilidade do Desequilíbrio orçamentário do governo, bem como, o seu efeito, através das expectativas, sobre os argumentos da demanda relativa de moedas. Finalmente, a partir de dados da economia boliviana correspondentes ao período pós-hiperinflacionário, 1988-1991, se analisa e discute a estabilidade do câmbio.

Buy-or-sell auctions

This paper develops a game theoretic model of a "Buy-or-Sell" auction. Participants have to submit both a bid and an offer price for up to one of the many units of the good being auctioned. The bid-ask spread is set in advance by the auctioneer. Such an auction was used by the Central Bank of Brazil to intervene in the foreign exchange market during the exchange rate crawling-peg regime (1995-1999). I investigate whether such mechanism is more effective than standard intervention auctions to prevent speculative attacks in the context of managed exchange rate regimes.