A Tale of Two Monetary Reforms: Argentinean Convertibility in Historical Perspective

Argentina adopted currency type board arrangements to put an end to monetary instability in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries under very different historical circumstances and contexts with very different results. The first currency board functioned within an international system that functioned in manner similar to a closed economy. The second currency board experiment the historical conditions. The poor export performance, and the unsustainable trade and current account deficits, resulting from the process of external liberalization, and the process of international financial liberalization eventually led to the collapse of the Convertibility experiment. The role of economic ideas – in particular, the incorrect lessons taken from the first globalization period – in furthering the economic imbalances were central to the failure of the 1991 Convertibility experiment.