Chronicle of a Dollarization Foretold: Inflation and Exchange Rates Dynamics

We study the effects of an anticipated dollarization, announced today but planned to be implemented at some future date, in a simple open-economy model. Motivated by the profile of countries considering dollarization we make the following assumptions. First, the government faces a scarcity of dollars to pledge for the future conversion of domestic currency. Second, without dollarization monetary policy finances a deficit via seignorage. We focus on the pre-dollarization period. Our results are as follows. First, the announcement leads to a discrete devaluation on impact. Second, after this jump the devaluation rate also rises relative to the no dollarization benchmark. Finally, the devaluation and inflation rate may rises over time.