De la discusión de la primera sección, varios autores recomiendan tipos de cambio fijos o dolarizaciones de derecho o uniones monetarias para economías pequeñas. Algunos reconocen los problemas planteados por la globalización del capital y los fenómenos de los sudden stopsy las cri-
sis que pueden provocar con sistemas financieros débiles y poca credi- bilidad en la política económica. La alta dolarización de hecho signifi- ca que hay límites a fuertes devaluaciones como formas de enfrentar crisis cambiarias y sus gemelas, las crisis financieras. Por eso, las pro- puestas para mayor flexibilidad cambiaria, como las hechas en los dos escenarios anteriores, tiene que verse con cautela. Calvo (2000), tiene una advertencia importante:
In summary IT [Inflation Targeting] has no clear advantage over HP [Hard Pegs], and the credibility of IT is difficult to establish. It would be a serious mistake to let one’s choice by guided by the Siren’s Song of the extra degrees of freedom provided by IT. … This should not be taken to imply that HP automatically carries an economy to the bliss point. HP has
to be supplemented by adequate institutions and regulatory conditions. Calvo (2000, p. 7).
Uno de los principales problemas que Calvo menciona para los tipos de cambio con flotación y las metas de inflación tiene que ver con las ine- ficiencias en los mercados de capitales de los países emergentes. Con al- ta dolarización, como es el caso de Costa Rica, los tipos de cambio flo- tantes pueden no funcionar y más bien los países emergentes con alta dolarización tienen, probablemente, que pensar en sistemas cambiarios con tipos fijados (“hard pegs”). Con la globalización e integración de los
mercados de capitales y los problemas de sudden stopsde las entradas de
capitales, la alta dolarización puede hacer muy costosas las fluctuacio- nes extremas en el tipo de cambio. Como la principal justificación a ti- pos de cambio más flexibles en Costa Rica proviene de tener una mayor posibilidad de fluctuaciones cambiarias en caso de crisis en escenarios como el escenario base en el que no se corrigen los problemas que pue- den llevara a crisis, la lata dolarización reduce la justificación de la ma- yor flexibilidad en el tipo de cambio, el escenario optimista, habría más razones para pensar que la dolarización podría paulatinamente dismi- nuir y justificar más flexibilidad cambiaria. Por lo anterior, la adverten- cia de Calvo hace pensar que, en el escenario base, ante una crisis cam- biaria los ajustes tendrían que recaer más en otros instrumentos como las tasa de interés, restricciones fiscales y monetarias, posiblemente, las restricciones cambiarias temporales.
En el caso de Costa Rica, los principales riesgos al cambio en el sistema cambiario se derivan de:
i. Funcionamiento de imperfectos mercados cambiarios, futuros, li- quidez para manejar la mayor volatilidad cambiaria.
ii. La alta dolarización de hecho del sistema financiero y sus deudores. iii. Falta de instrumentos eficientes para influir sobre las tasa de interés
o agregados monetarios por imperfecciones en los mercados. iv. Fuerte presión de gasto público puede disminuir credibilidad en
factibilidad de cambio y propiciar crisis.
v. Oposición a desmantelar la indexación de salarios, precios de servi- cios públicos, etcétera.
vi. Shocksexternos que impidan bajar la inflación en la transición.
vii. Dificultades en BCCR para modelar el funcionamiento de la econo- mía, los efectos sobre la inflación de diferentes shocksetc.
viii.Empantanamiento de reformas legales y operativas para mejorar supervisión financiera (supervisión consolidada, mejor manejo de riesgos a lo interno de los bancos)
Por otro lado, hay algunos puntos favorables a un sistema más flexible: i. El BCCR tiene relativa credibilidad.
ii. El BCCR tiene buena independencia.
iii. Las reservas monetarias internacionales del BCCR son relativamen- te altas.
iv. La situación fiscal bajo control y con una aparente decisión política de buscar sostenibilidad y eliminar déficit del BCCR.
En resumen, Costa Rica tendrá que trabajar en fortalecer varios aspec- tos fiscales y financieros para que puedan funcionar adecuadamente sistemas como el de metas de inflación. Si el sistema financiero no se des-dolariza, se reducen las probabilidades de éxito de los tipos de cam- bio más flexibles.
4.4 CONCLUSIONES
Costa Rica ha manejado un sistema cambiario de minidevaluaciones o
crawling pegen los últimos veintitrés años, que ha sido exitoso para fi-
nanciar con un impuesto inflacionario buena parte del déficit financie- ro del Banco Central de Costa Rica, por un desbalance patrimonial he- redado de la crisis de la deuda externa entre los años 1980-1982. Ese régimen de minidevaluaciones se ha manejado con flexibilidad y esto ha sido una de las razones que ha permitido al país vivir sin crisis eco- nómicas en los últimos veintitrés años. Sin embargo, se han acumulado problemas que representan riesgos para la economía. En ese contexto, este documento defiende la tesis de modificar el régimen cambiario y pasarse en forma gradual a un sistema cambiario más flexible.
En un escenario pesimista donde no se lleven a cabo las reformas fisca- les, financieras y comerciales, ese cambio en las condiciones actuales de ausencia crisis es tal vez más urgente y permitiría estar con una situa- ción cambiaria y monetaria más flexible. Si se realizan las reformas, co- mo se plantea en el escenario optimista, también justificamos el cambio a un sistema más flexible, donde el mayor control monetario se enfoque en una rebaja en la tasa de inflación a niveles internacionales. En todos lo casos, hay que tener presente la advertencia de Guillermo Calvo, en el sentido de que los ineficientes mercados de capitales de países como Costa Rica, la alta dolarización y los “sudden stops” de los movimientos
de capitales del exterior, pueden descartar los tipos de cambio más fle- xibles. Esto lleva a justificar las reformas requeridas para eliminar las fuentes de crisis financieras, fiscales y cambiarias, en particular, una mayor sostenibilidad fiscal, menor dolarización y reformas en el siste- ma financiero. En el largo plazo, una vez que la economía haya logra- do reducir la inflación a niveles internacionales, sería muy conveniente considerar si Costa Rica debe entrar en una dolarización de derecho o en una unión monetaria.
REFERENCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS
BCCR (2003). Balance del Banco Central. 1986-2002. Presentación en
Power Point. San José: Banco Central de Costa Rica.
__________ (2006). Informe de inflación. Enero, 2006. San José: Banco
Central de Costa Rica.
Bolaños, Rodrigo (2002). “Reforma financiera en Costa Rica: los gran- des temas de la agenda para el inicio del Siglo XXI”, en Edna Camacho Mejía, editora, Costa Rica: una economía frente al desa- fío fiscal, pp. 63-130. San José: Academia de Centroamérica. Calvo, Guillermo A. (2000). “The case for hard pegs in the brave new
world of global finance”. Mimeo, junio.
Calvo, Guillermo A. y Frederic S. Mishkin (2003). “The mirage of ex- change rate regimes for emerging market countries”, NBER Working Paper No. 9808, junio.
Calvo, Guillermo A. y Carmen M. Reinhart (1999). “When capital in- flows come to a sudden stop: consequences and policy op- tions”. Mimeo, junio.
Calvo, Guillermo A. y Carmen M. Reinhart (2000). “Fear of floating”, enQuarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 117, No. 2, pp. 379-408.
Corden, W. Max (2002). Too sensational: on the choice of exchange rate re- gimes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Delgado, Félix (2000). La política monetaria en Costa Rica: 50 años del Ban- co Central de Costa Rica. San José: Banco Central de Costa Rica.
Edwards, Sebastián (1989). Real exchange rates, devaluation, and adjust- ment. exchange rate policy in developing countries. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Edwards, Sebastián (2002). “The great exchange rate debate after Ar- gentina”, NBER Working Paper No. 9257, octubre.
Edwards, Sebastián e Igal Magendzo (2003). “A Currency of One’s
Own? An Empirical Investigation on Dollarization and Inde- pendent Currency Unions”. NBER, Working PaperNo. 9514, fe- brero.
Eichengreen, Barry (1996). Globalizing capital. A history of the interna- tional monetary system. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Eichengreen, Barry; Paul Mason, Miguel Savastano y Sunil Sharma (1999). “Transition strategies and nominal anchors on the road to greater exchange-rate flexibility”, en International Finance,
No. 215, abril. Princeton, N. J.: International Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton University.
Frankel, Jeffrey A. (1999). “No single currency regime is right for all countries or at all times”, en International Finance, No.213, agos- to. Princeton, N. J.: International Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton University.
Frenkel, Jacob A. y Harry G. Johnson (1976). The Monetary Approach to the Balance of Payments. Toronto and Buffalo: University of To-
ronto Press.
Friedman, Milton (1979). Moneda y desarrollo económico. Segunda edi-
ción. Buenos Aires: Editorial El Ateneo.
Fisher, Stanley (2001). “Exchange rates regimes: is the bipolar view correct?”, enJournal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 50, No. 2, pri-
mavera, pp. 3-24
Hayek, Friedrich A. (1960). The constitution of liberty. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
__________ (1975). “Full employment at any price?”, Institute of Econo- mic Affairs, Occasional Paper No. 45.
__________ (1978). “Denationalization of money-the argument refined”. Institute of Economic Affairs,Hobart Paper Special No. 70, se- gunda edición edition. Reproducido en Hayek (1991), pp. 125- 235.
__________ (1991). Economic freedom. Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Black- well.
Johnson, Harry G. (1973). “The case for flexible exchange rates, 1969”, en H. G. Johnson, 1973, Further essays in Monetary Economics.
Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, p. 206. Publicado originalmente en 1969.
Larraín, Felipe y Andrés Velasco (2001). “Exchange-rate policy in emerging-market economies: the caes for floating”, en Interna- tional Finance, No. 224, diciembre. Princeton, N. J.: Internatio- nal Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton Uni- versity.
Lizano, Eduardo (2003). Veinte Años sin Crisis Financieras (1984-2004): El Caso de Costra Rica, en López y Herrera, pp. 81-140.
López, Grettel y Reinaldo Herrera, editores (2003). Volatilidad y vulne- rabilidad. El Caso de Costa Rica, veinte años (1984-2004) sin crisis. San José: Academia de Centroamérica.
Obstenfeld, Maurice y Kenneth Rogoff (1995). “The mirage of ex- change rates”, en Journal of Economic Perspectives,Vol. 9, No. 4,
otoño, pp. 73-96.
Smith, Adam (1965). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Edición de Edwin Cannan (edición original de Mo-
dern Library de 1937). Nueva York: The Modern Library. Williamson, John (1994). Estimating equilibrium exchange rates. Was-
hington: Institute for International Economics.
__________ (1998). “Crawling bands or monitoring bands: how to ma- nage exchange rates in a world of capital mobility”, en Speeches, testimony, papers. Washington: Institute for International Eco- nomics. Publicado originalmente en International Finance, octu-
bre, 1998.
__________ (2000a). “Exchange rate regimes for emerging markets: re- viving the intermediate option”, en Policy Analyses in Internatio- nal Economics, No. 60. Washington: Institute for International Economics.
__________ (2000b). “Designing a middle way between fixed and flexi- ble exchange rates”, en Speeches, testimony, papers. Washington: Institute for International Economics. Presentado originalmen- te en la conferencia “Monetary and exchange rate policies: op- tions for Egypt”, 19-20 de noviembre de 2000. El Cairo: Egyp- tian Center for Economic Studies.
ANEXO
CITAS ESCOGIDAS SOBRE TIPOS DE CAMBIO
Citas de Friedrich A. Hayek
En su ensayo “Denationalization of money”, Hayek escribió:
Readers who know of my consistent support over more than 40 years of fixed rates of exchange between national currencies, and of my critique of a system of flexible rates of foreign exchange, …even after most of my fellow defenders of free market had become converters into this system, will probably feel at first that my present position [for completely free markets for all kinds of currency] is in conflict with, or even represents a complete reversal of, my former views.
This is not so. [M]y present proposal [for completely free markets for all kinds of currency] is a result of the further development of the considerations which determined my former position. …I have regarded fixed rates of exchange as necessary for the same reason for which I now plead for completely free markets for all kinds of currency, namely that it was required to impose a very necessary discipline or restraint on the agencies issuing money. Neither I, nor apparently anybody
else, then thought of the much more effective discipline that would operate if the providers of money were deprived power of shielding the money they issued against the rivalry ofcompeting currencies.
The compulsion to maintain a fixed rate of redemption in terms of gold or other currencies has in the past provided the only discipline that effectively prevented monetary authorities from giving in to the demands of the ever-present pressure for cheap money. The gold standard, fixed rates of exchange, or any other form of obligatory conversion to a fixed rate, served no other purpose than to impose upon the issuers of money such a discipline and, by making its regulation automatic, to deprive them of the power arbitrarily to change the quantity of money. It is a discipline that has proved too weak to prevent governments from breaking it. Yet, though the regulations achieved by those automatic controls
were far from ideal or even tolerably satisfactory, so long as currencies were thus regulated they were more much satisfactory than anything the discretionary powers of governmental monopolies have ever achieved at any length of time. Nothing short of the belief that it would be a national disgrace for a country not to live up to its obligations has ever sufficed adequately to strengthen the resistance of monetary authorities against pressures for cheap money. Hayek (1978, pp.
197-199 [la cursiva no está en el original]).
Previamente, posiblemente antes de la iniciar la defensa del “free mo- ney”, había escrito lo siguiente en 1975:
It is, I believe, undeniable that the demand for flexible rates of exchange originated wholly from countries such as Britain some of whose economists wanted a wider margin for inflationary expansion (called “full employment policy”). They have, unfortunately, later received support also from other economists who were not inspired by the desire for inflation but who seem to me to have overlooked the strongest argument in favour of fixed rates of exchange: that they constitute the practically irreplaceable curb we need to compel the politicians, and the monetary authorities responsible to them, to maintain a stable currency.
The maintenance of the value of money and the avoidance of inflation constantly demand from the politicians highly unpopular measures which they can justify to people adversely affected only by showing that government was compelled to take them. So long as the preservation of the external value of the national currency is regarded as an indisputable necessity, as it is with fixed exchange rates,
politicians can resist the constant demands for cheaper credits, avoidance of a rise in interest rates, more expenditure on “public works”, and so on. With fixed exchanges a fall in the foreign value of the currency or an outflow of gold or foreign exchange reserves acted as a signal requiring prompt government action. With flexible exchange rates, the effect of an increase in the quantity of money on the internal price level is much too slow to be generally recognised or to be charged to those ultimately
responsible for it. Moreover, the inflation of prices is usually preceded by a welcome increase in employment, and it may therefore even be welcomed because its harmful effects are not visible until later.”
It is therefore easy to understand why, in the hope of restraining countries all too inclined towards inflation, others like Germany, even while noticeably suffering from imported inflation, hesitated in the postwar period to destroy altogether the system of fixed rates of exchange. For a time it seemed likely to restrain the temptation further to speed up inflation … But now that the system of fixed exchange rates appears to have totally collapsed, and there is scarcely any hope that self-discipline might induce some countries to restrain themselves, little reason is left to adhere to a system that is no longer effective..… But,in the long run I do not believe we shall regain a system of international stability without returning to a system of fixed exchange rates which
imposes upon the national central banks the restraint essential if they are successfully to resist the pressure of the inflation-minded forces of their countries-usually including Ministers of Finance. Hayek (1975, pp. 272-273, [la cursiva no está en el original]).
Citas de Harry G. Johnson
En su “Case for Flexible Exchange Rates, 1969”, Johnson argumentaba: The argument that the flexible exchange-rate system would promote inflation …reflects in part circular reasoning on the part of the fixed rate proponents: discipline against inflationary policies, if necessary for international reasons, is necessary only because rates are fixed, and domestic inflation both leads to balance-of-payments problems and imposes inflations on other countries. Neither consequence would follow under the flexible exchange-rate system. Apart from its external repercussions, inflation may be regarded as undesirable for domestic reasons; but the fixed rate system imposes, not the need to maintain domestic price stability, but the obligation to conform to the average world
trend of prices, which may be either inflationary or deflationary rather than stable. Moreover, under the adjustable- peg system actually existing, countries can evade the discipline against excessively rapid inflation by drawing down reserves and burrowing, by imposing restrictions on international trade and payments, and in the last resort by devaluing their currencies. The record since the First World War speaks poorly for the anti- inflationary discipline of fixed exchange rates. The reason is that
the signal to governments of the need for anti-inflationary discipline comes through a loss of exchange reserves, the implications of which are understood by only a few and can be disregarded or temporized with until a crisis descends; the crisis then justifies all sort of policy expedients other than domestic deflation that the logic adjustments under the fixed rate demands. Under a flexible exchange rate system, the consequences of inflationary governmental policies would be much more readily apparent to the general population, in the form of
declining foreign value of the currency and an upward trend in domestic prices; proper policies to correct the situation, if it were desired to correct, could be argued about in an atmosphere free from crisis. Johnson (1973, pp. 215-216).
Citas de Barry Eichengreen
En su capítulo de conclusiones en “Globalizing Capital”:,Eichengreen escribió:
The quarter century since the collapse of the Bretton Woods System of pegged but adjustable exchange rates has seen
steady movement toward fluctuating currencies.
...
But the conjunction of free trade and fettered finance was not dynamically stable. Once current-account convertibility was
restored at the end of the 1950s, governments discovered how difficult it was to verify that a particular purchase of foreign exchange had been undertaken for purposes related to trade rather than currency speculation. And as international transactions were liberalized, it became
impossible to keep domestic markets tightly regulated. Once financial markets joined the list of those undergoing decontrol, new channels were opened through which capital might flow, and the feasibility of controlling international capital movements diminished accordingly.
…
The obvious conclusion is that the trend toward greater exchange rate flexibility is an inevitable consequence of rising international capital mobility. It is important, therefore, to recollect earlier
historical periods, like that of the c1assical gold standard, when high international capital mobility did not preclude the maintenance of stable rates.
…
The credibility of this commitment obviated the need for capital controls to insulate governments from market pressures that might produce a crisis. The authorities could take the steps needed to defend the currency without