movements are less important than those against the dollar and the euro and that those
exchange movements, and the interest variability that accompanies them, have a
negative influence on employment and investments in the region.
Temprano Arroyo (2003) in addition points out that any regional monetary integration
arrangement would suffer from the absence of an established and credible low inflation
anchor. Without a stable anchor, the danger of speculative attacks against the anchor
currency and satellites would be high. Nevertheless, taking account of the high degree
of financial dollarization and the crucial credibility aspect, he concludes that, at least for
the Central American countries, a case can be made for a peg to the dollar if not full
dollarization. For the Andean Community, this conclusion can hardly be drawn, given
the lower degree of trade integration with the dollar area. If, however, the Andean
countries should decide to peg to an outside currency, the case for a dollar peg would be
stronger than that for a euro peg, simply because large parts of the sub-region are
already dollarized.
Exclusive intra-regional pegs in Latin America therefore apparently make not much
sense, nor do full monetary unions between the countries in the region, because they are
too little integrated among themselves and rely too much on trade relations with third
countries.16 At the same time, one might conclude that financially dollarized countries
are well off with a dollar peg. Accordingly, there appears to be no particular exchange
rate regime that fits all Latin American countries, and especially Mercosur countries
might not benefit from forming a regional monetary union among themselves.
Nevertheless, it remains a fact that dissimilar exchange rate regimes may not only have
a significant impact on trade flows, they may also act as an impediment to deeper
regional integration, as countries gain price competitiveness at the expense of their
regional partners. This has become obvious within Mercosur, as the Brazilian real
strongly depreciated by around 40 per cent in early 1999, whereas the Argentine Peso
was pegged to the (then rising) US-dollar. As a consequence, Brazil’s firms enhanced
their price competitiveness and the trade balance improved significantly, though there
has been a time-lag of one to two years before imports and exports responded to
movements in the (real) exchange rate (Figure 2). Overall, Brazil’s trade balance
switched from a deficit of US$ 12.2 billion in 1998 to a surplus of US$ 2.1 billion in
2001.