Fear of Appreciation

Eduardo Levy-Yeyati, Federico Sturzenegger and Pablo Gluzmann
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Eduardo Levy Yeyati

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In recent years the term “fear of floating” has been used to describe exchange rate regimes that, while officially flexible, in practice intervene heavily to avoid sudden or large depreciations. However, the data reveals that in most cases (and increasingly so in the 2000s) intervention has been aimed at limiting appreciations rather than depreciations, often motivated by the neomercantilist view of a depreciated real exchange rate as protection for domestic industries. As a first step to address the broader question of whether this view delivers on its promise, we examine whether this “fear of appreciation” has a positive impact on growth performance in developing economies. We show that depreciated exchange rates indeed lead to higher growth, but that the effect, rather than through import substitution or export booms as argued by the mercantilist view, works largely through the deepening of domestic savings and capital accumulation.

Keywords: exchange rate regimes; fear of floating; economic growth; real exchange rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F31 F33 F36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-11, Revised 2012-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/42917/2/MPRA_paper_42917.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Fear of appreciation (2013)
Working Paper: Fear of Appreciation (2007)
Working Paper: Fear of Appreciation (2007)
Working Paper: Fear of appreciation (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:42917

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().