Macroeconomic policies and financial shocks in dollarized economies

Emerging economies are usually affected by external shocks whose effects are amplified by internal vulnerabilities like imperfect credit markets, dollarization, and nominal rigidities. This dissertation analyses the stabilizing role of the exchange rate regime and the fiscal policy in this context. The first chapter analyzes this kind of problems providing a first extensive comparison between the Argentine and Uruguayan crises of 2001-2002. We show how the more flexible monetary policy in the Uruguayan case helps explain the better performance of Uruguay. Uruguay enjoyed better credit conditions during the recession. Different credit conditions seem to reflect a different reputation.
This situation and the different ways both countries handled the debt restructuring after the crisis had a long-lasting impact on the performance of both countries. The second chapter investigates the role played by external and internal forces in the recession events that happened during the Argentine Convertibility period (1991-2001) until its collapse. We find evidence of an important role of external shocks in the Russian crisis and in the end of the Convertibility. Internal vulnerabilities, related to Argentine idiosyncratic risk shocks, were also present during the Tequila crisis and in the Convertibility collapse.
Finally, chapter three studies the optimal combination of fiscal policy and exchange rate flexibility in a dollarized small open economy that has to cope with external shocks. Our analysis suggests that a countercyclical fiscal policy dominates other alternatives. The choice of the exchange rate regime is crucial only when fiscal policy is not countercyclical enough.