Exchange Rate Volatility and Productivity Growth: the Role of Liability Dollarization

This paper studies how liability dollarization conditions the effect of exchange rate flexibility on growth. It develops a model with credit-constrained firms facing liquidity shocks denominated in tradables while their revenues are both in tradable and nontradables. With frictions in the reallocation between tradables and nontradables, a peg is more growth-enhancing than a float in countries with dollarized debt because it stabilizes firms' cash flows. However, this relative advantage diminishes when dollarization decreases. These theoretical predictions are confirmed by an empirical analysis on a panel of 76 countries spanning 1995-2004: the higher the degree of dollarization, the more negative the impact of exchange rate flexibility on growth.