Fiscal Policy And The Business Cycle Associated With Exchange Rate Based Stabilizations

The Business Cycle Associated with Exchange-rate-based Stabilization

Disinflation programs in chronic inflation countries do not normally follow the usual Phillips curve tradeoff in the medium run. Instead of having a sharp recession in the early stage of stabilization, there often is an initial expansion of output followed by a recession and balance of payments difficulties. This pattern is related to programs that use the exchange rate as an instrument of disinflation.

Fiscal Policy and the Business Cycle Associated with Exchange Rate-based Stabilizations

The Role of Fiscal Policy in Sustainable Stabilization

This paper reviews the role of fiscal policy in a number of stabilization programs in Latin America since the early 1980s. The paper highlights the importance of sustainable fiscal adjustment in stabilization efforts, and discusses the main issues that arise in this context. By reviewing the Latin American experience, it is argued that responsibility for failed stabilization attempts can be traced to four main factors: inconsistent policy mixes; excessive reliance on temporary factors of improvement in the fiscal accounts; failure to implement fundamental fiscal reforms; and lack of complementary structural reforms.