Monetary policy, exchange rate targeting and fear of floating in emerging market economies

Abstract

This paper investigates whether central banks in emerging markets systematically respond to exchange rate movements. It estimates a structural general equilibrium model of a small open economy with an exchange rate-augmented Taylor-type rule for four countries. The results show that over the entire sample-period, South Africa and Mexico do not target the exchange rate, whereas Indonesia and Thailand do. In the 1980s and 1990s, all four countries targeted the exchange rate but in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, the Mexican peso crisis, and the end of apartheid, they all liberalized their exchange rate regimes, shifting toward inflation targeting.