The Anatomy of a Multiple Crisis : Why Was Argentina Special and What Can We Learn from It?

Perry, Guillermo ; Serven, Luis

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGGREGATE DEMAND;    ASYMMETRIC SHOCKS;    BALANCE OF PAYMENTS;    BALANCE SHEET;    BALANCE SHEETS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-3081
RP-ID  :  WPS3081

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The Argentine crisis has been variouslyblamed on fiscal imbalances, real overvaluation, andself-fulfilling investor pessimism triggering a capital flowreversal. The authors provide an encompassing assessment ofthe role of these and other ingredients in the recentmacroeconomic collapse. They show that in the final years ofconvertibility, Argentina was not hit harder than otheremerging markets in Latin America and elsewhere by globalterms-of-trade and financial disturbances. So the crisisreflects primarily the high vulnerability to disturbancesbuilt into Argentina's policy framework. Three keysources of vulnerability are examined: the hard peg adoptedagainst optimal currency area considerations in a context ofwage and price inflexibility; the fragile fiscal positionresulting from an expansionary stance in the boom; and thepervasive mismatches in the portfolios of banks'borrowers. While there were important vulnerabilities ineach of these areas, neither of them was higher than thoseaffecting other countries in the region, and thus there isnot one obvious suspect. But the three reinforced each otherin such a perverse way that taken jointly they led to a muchlarger vulnerability to adverse external shocks than in anyother country in the region. Underlying thesevulnerabilities was a deep structural problem of theArgentine economy that led to harsh policy dilemmas beforeand after the crisis erupted. On the one hand, the Argentinetrade structure made a peg to the dollar highly inconvenientfrom the point of view of the real economy. On the otherhand, the strong preference of Argentinians for the dollaras a store of value-after the hyperinflation andconfiscation experiences of the 1980s-had led to a highlydollarized economy in which a hard peg or even fulldollarization seemed reasonable alternatives from afinancial point of view.