EXCHANGE RATE POLICY
So far we have considered the impact of monetary and fiscal policy, but there is a third policy
that governments can use to stimulate or slow down their economy under fixed exchange rates.
The third policy is a devaluation or revaluation of the currency. This is not to say that the
government allows the exchange rate to change and float freely. A devaluation or revaluation is
simply a statement on the part of the government that instead of holding the price of foreign
currency at exchange rate E0, it will now hold it at exchange rate E1 ≠ E0. It is a policy because
the government changes the peg unilaterally from E0 to E1 for a specific reason.
An increase in the price of foreign currency is called a devaluation (more units of domestic
currency are necessary to buy one foreign currency unit) and a decrease is a revaluation. A
devaluation makes domestic exports more attractive and this is why countries, at times, engage
in competitive devaluations to protect their domestic producers as well as giving their exporters
an edge. In contrast, a corrective devaluation is one that aligns the nominal with the real
exchange rate after periods of high inflation. We consider the economic theory behind these two
forms of devaluation within the framework of the Mundell–Fleming model. We also assume that
the Marshall–Lerner conditions are met: the devaluation results in an improvement in the
balance of trade.