Early in 2000, Ecuador, confronted with a serious economic crisis, adopted the US dollar as its national currency, This book examines the conditions that led to this action, describing the repeated cycles of crisis and failed stabilization that fatally undermined confidence in the Ecuadorian...

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- 1 Crisis and Dollarization: An Overview -- 2 Longer- Term Origins of Ecuador's ÏPredollarizationÓ Crisis -- 3 Ecuador under Dollarization: Opportunities and Risks -- 4 Ecuador: Crisis, Poverty, and Social Protection -- 5 Gender Dimensions of...

Over the 1980s and 1990s, GDP growth had stagnated because of oil export price volatility and natural disasters, the sacrifice of capital formation to heavy external public debt service, and incomplete and uneven structural reform. The exchange rate depreciation that proved continually necessary...