Rampant inflation is a major economic problem in many of the less developed countries; two out of three attempts to stabilize these economies fail. Inflation Stabilization provides a valuable description and a critical analysis of the disinflation programs introduced in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Israel in 1985-86, and discusses the possibility of such a program in Mexico. It documents the initial steps in stabilization as well as the reasons for failure.As architects of the programs, several of the authors are in key positions to assess which aspects were critical in getting the programs accepted and where to look for difficulties and failures. In Israel, inflation was halted without recession. The challenge to policy makers today is in shifting from stabilization to the revival of sustained growth. This experience is described fully by Michael Bruno and Sylvia Piterman, who examine the critical issue of exchange rates, and by Alex Cukierman, who uses modeling to analyze the interaction of money, wages, prices, and activity under rational expectations that take the government's policy objectives into account.Endemic inflation and a sudden increase in external debt burden Argentina's economy, raising the wider issues of high inflation economies and stabilization that are discussed in the chapter by José Luis Machinea and that by Guido Di Tella and Alfredo Canavese.Eduardo Modiano and Mario Simonsen take up issues of wages in Brazil, particularly the problem of finding an equitable way to deal with a wage freeze; Simonsen develops an ambitious game theoretic rationalization of incomes policy as a coordinating device for imperfectly competitive economies. Bolivia did reach hyperinflation (price increases of more than 50 percent each month) before stabilizing. Juan Antonio Morales shows how stabilizing the exchange rate, in an economy where all pricing was already geared to the dollar, achieved stabilization without a wage or price freeze. And Francisco Gil Diaz asks whether an incomes-policy based program could work to control ever increasing inflation in Mexico.

This book analyzes the Peruvian and Bolivian macroeconomic experiments. It contrasts the logic of orthodox and heterodox policy, offers an account of the dynamics of hyperinflation and stabilization, explores the explicit and implicit class character, and suggests some lessons for future policy .

We analyse optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New-Keynesian model with public debt and inflation persistence. Leith and Wren-Lewis (2007) have shown that optimal discretionary policy is subject to a 'debt stabilization bias' which requires debt to be returned to its pre-shock level. This finding has two important implications for optimal discretionary policy. Firstly, as Leith and Wren-Lewis have shown, optimal monetary policy in an economy with high steady-state debt cuts the interest rate in response to a cost-push shock - and therefore violates the Taylor principle. We show that this striking result is not true with high degrees of inflation persistence. Secondly, we show that optimal fiscal policy is more active under discretion than commitment at all degrees of inflation persistence and all levels of debt.

Adding estimated behavioral equations to the standard RMSM- X model allows it to simulate the short- run consequences of inflation stabilization.

Money, Financial Instability and Stabilization Policy consists of original articles by leading Post Keynesians, Kaleckians and other heterodox economists from the developed and developing world. Post Keynesian literature has long been associated with the study of money, financial markets and financial instability. Indeed, this is perhaps the area to which Post Keynesians have made the greatest contributions. The authors to this volume present an overview of the latest research on monetary theory and policy, financial markets, and financial instability coming out of the Post Keynesian school of thought. They provide an indication of the wide-ranging interests and of the truly international scope of Post Keynesian research. The first half of the volume is theoretical, while the second half includes papers that are either empirical or more focused on specific concerns. This book will find an appreciative audience in economists generally as well as Post Keynesian, other heterodox economists and macroeconomists specifically.