[工程科技]comments and Iván Guerra for helpful research assistance Monetary Policy Strategies for L.pdf

MONETARY POLICY STRATEGIES FOR LATIN AMERICA by Frederic S. Mishkin Graduate School of Business, Columbia University and National Bureau of Economic Research e-mail: fsm3@columbia.edu and Miguel A. Savastano Research Department International Monetary Fund e-mail: msavastano@imf.org Prepared for the Interamerican Seminar on Economics, Buenos Aires, December 2-4, 1999. The views expressed in this paper are exclusively those of the authors and not those of Columbia University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the International Monetary Fund, or the World Bank. We thank Sebastian Edwards, Esteban Jadresic, Fernando Losada, Federico Sturzenegger, Lars Svensson, participants in the Macro Lunch at Columbia University, participants at the Interamerican Seminar, and an anonymous referee, for helpful comments and Iván Guerra for helpful research assistance. Monetary Policy Strategies for Latin America Frederic S. Mishkin and Miguel A. Savastano JEL No. E5, F33, O54 Abstract The paper examines possible monetary policy strategies for Latin America that may help lock-in the gains in the fight against inflation attained by the region during the 1990s. Instead of focusing the debate about the conduct of monetary policy on whether the nominal exchange rate should be fixed or flexible, the focus should be on whether the monetary policy regime appropriately constrains discretion in monetary policymaking. This focus suggests that there are three basic fr