Central Bank Independence and Foreign Exchange Policies in Latin America

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La serie Borradores de Economía es una publicación de la Subgerencia de Estudios Económicos del Banco de la República. Los trabajos son de carácter provisional, las opiniones y posibles errores son responsabilidad exclusiva del autor y sus contenidos no comprometen al Banco de la República ni a su Junta Directiva.

Autor o Editor
Roberto Junguito
Hernando Vargas

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the links between central bank independence and foreing exchange policies, in the light of the recent experience of the major Latin American countries. To that end, the paper starts with a brief review of the literature on the subject. The second section of the paper deals with the different structures or models of central bank and foreing exchange management adopted in Latin-America. The third and central part sets up an analytical model which describes the objective function of the authority and derives the expected inflation path for each type of Latin- American central bank model. The paper ends with a section of monetary games illustrating the conflicts that arise between the Government and an independent central bank, when the monetary and foreign exchange policies are not controlled by the same authority.    
 
The series Borradores de Economía is published by the Economic Studies Department at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). The works published are provisional, and their authors are fully responsible for the opinions expressed in them, as well as for possible mistakes. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.