Analyzes the rise and fall of the Red de Trueque (launched in 1995 by a group of environmentalists who exchanged goods and services at their own 'market' using a system of mutual credit) in Argentina. This book identifies rules of governance and sustainability for institutional settings in which state regulation is minimal.

Analyzes the rise and fall of the Red de Trueque (launched in 1995 by a group of environmentalists who exchanged goods and services at their own 'market' using a system of mutual credit) in Argentina. This book identifies rules of governance and sustainability for institutional settings in which state regulation is minimal.

Originally published in Argentina in 2019 and now finally available in English, Luzzi and Wilkis’s acclaimed book traces the history of the economic, social, and political relevance of the dollar in Argentina and its popularization over the years. How did the dollar come to play such a leading role in Argentina’s national existence? How and why did this global currency become a local currency on the other end of the Western hemisphere? Through the reconstruction of the social and cultural history of the US dollar in Argentina, Luzzi and Wilkis provide original insight into this sidebar of the dollar’s history, showing how it became a “local” currency even outside its country of origin.

This paper examines the issue of mean and variance causality across four Latin American official and black markets for foreign currency using the corresponding monthly exchange rate against the US dollar for the period 1976-1993. Specifically, we apply an EGARCH-M model to study the behaviour of the Argentinian peso, the Brazilian cruzeiro, the Chilean peso and the Mexican peso against the US dollar. Furthermore, we apply a recent test due to Cheung and Ng (1996) in order to test for the existence of any causality and volatility spillovers among these official and black markets for foreign exchange. The main findings of the analysis are: (i) In contrast to the findings of previous studies using monthly rates, EGARCH-M processes characterize each bilateral exchange rate series in both markets; (ii) There is substantial evidence of causality in both mean and variance with the causality in mean largely being driven by the causality in variance; and (iii) The results indicate that the major exporter of causality is the Mexican black market with the black market of Argentina and the black and official markets of Brazil being the least contributors.