Traditionally most countries in Latin America have only considered pegs to the USdollar.
Only relatively recently has attention been devoted to the (for now mostly
theoretical) option of some kind of regional monetary integration.11
Up to the collapse of the Argentine currency board in December 2001, there was a clear
tendency in most Latin American countries to have a formally declared or de-facto peg
to the US-dollar, some going even so far as to dollarize completely (Ecuador, El
Salvador).12 In their assessment of the performance of exchange rate regimes in Latin
America, Hausmann et al. (1999) accordingly stress the revealed preference of most
international rates, and a higher tendency for wage indexation.13 Therefore, before 1998
most countries would not allow for large exchange rate movements, even in the
presence of considerable shocks.14 Hausmann et al. (1999) conclude that most of the
countries that had nominally declared flexible rates actually operated as if being on
fixed rates (but without their benefits). Hence the currency board solution that
Argentina had chosen before its collapse in 2001 was generally considered as a success
before 2001 (Ghosh et al. 2000).15
To conclude that fixed exchange rates have been useful for many countries in the region
does not necessarily imply that a regional arrangement should be advocated. In fact, it is
quite obvious that Latin American economies do not fulfill the standard criteria
developed in the optimum currency area literature. Systematic studies that compare the
region to the European example notice huge differences between Europe and the region.
For instance, in a comprehensive study Temprano Arroyo (2003) looks in detail at all
the traditional criteria, such as trade openness, asymmetric shocks, interregional
financial integration and labor mobility, to conclude that the countries of Central
America, the Andean Community and of Mercosur do not constitute an optimum
currency area. Trade interdependence and intra-regional financial and labor market
integration are low, implying as well that the potential for asymmetric shocks is high.
Similarly, Larrain and Tavares (2003) show that the countries in Latin America have a
higher degree of real exchange rate variability than could be expected, given their
geographical closeness and economic characteristics. In comparison with other regions
such as Europe or Asia, they conclude that the region is the least integrated and thus
most vulnerable to asymmetric shocks and real exchange rate fluctuations.
Focusing especially on Mercosur, Belke and Gros (2002) show that these do not form a
regional (or sub-regional) bloc. They also show that intra-regional exchange rate
countries to have fixed exchange rates, even if they had formally declared floating rates.
They attribute this to the fact that flexible rates tended to be accompanied by higher
interest rates, smaller financial systems, a higher sensitivity of domestic rates to