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Floating Exchange Rates in Developing Countries: the Case of Zambia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
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When Zambia introduced weekly foreign-exchange auctions in October 1985 in order to determine the value of the kwacha vis-à-vis the dollar, together with other measures aiming at liberalising external and internal trade and at restructuring the pattern of production, they were widely acclaimed as a model for reforms elsewhere in the continent. The Economist praised Zambia for ‘taking one of the bravest economic gambles that any African country has taken’,1 implying that even in the view of liberal commentators the Government ran a considerable risk in trying to implement this reform programme. The new measures enabled Zambia to reach a fresh stand-by agreement with the International Monetary Fund in early 1986, the previous one having broken down in 1985 because the authorities failed to meet the I.M.F.'s economic targets.
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References
Page 503 note 1 The Economist (London), 19 10 1985.Google Scholar
Page 504 note 1 Cf. the survey of the literature in Wickham, Peter, The Choice of Exchange Rate Regime in Developing Countries (Washington, D.C., 1985), I.M.F. Staff Papers No. 32.Google Scholar
Page 504 note 2 Quirk, Peter J. et al. , Floating Exchange Rates in Developing Countries: experience with auction and interbank markets (Washington, D.C., 05 1987), I.M.F. Occasional Paper No. 53, pp. 1 and 32.Google Scholar
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Page 506 note 1 Ibid. pp. 8ff.
Page 506 note 2 Cf. Jacob A. Frenkel, ‘Flexible Exchange Rates, Prices, and the Role of “News”: lessons from the 1970s’, and Frankel, Jeffrey A., ‘Monetary and Portfolio-Balance Models of Exchange Rate Determination’, in Bhandari, J. S. and Putnam, B. H. (eds.), Economic Interdependence and Flexible Exchange Rates (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 3ff. and 84ff, respectively.Google Scholar
Page 507 note 1 See, for example, Akyüz, Yilmaz and Dell, Sidney, ‘Issues in International Monetary Reform’, in Unctad, International Monetary and Financial Issues for the DCs (New York, 1987).Google Scholar
Page 509 note 1 For an empirical study, see Brodsky, David A. and Sampson, Gary D., ‘Exchange Rate Variations Facing Individual Industries in Developing Countries’, in Journal of Development Studies (London), 19, 1983, pp. 349ff.Google Scholar
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Page 510 note 1 Black, S. W., Exchange Policies for Less Developed Countries in a World of Floating Rates (Princeton, 1976), Essays in International Finance No. 119.Google Scholar
Page 510 note 2 For the basic choices of managed exchange-rate régimes, see Wickham, op. cit. and the literature to which he refers.
Page 513 note 1 Harvey, Charles, ‘Non-Marginal Price Changes’, Economic Association of Zambia Conference on Auctioning of Foreign Exchange, Lusaka, 1987.Google Scholar
Page 515 note 1 World Bank, Report to the Consultative Group for Zambia on the Economic Reform Program (Washington, D.C., 1986), p. 4.Google Scholar
Page 515 note 2 See Makgetla, Neva Seidman, ‘Theoretical and Practical Implications of I.M.F. Conditionality in Zambia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge),24, 3, 09 1986, pp. 395–422.Google Scholar
Page 515 note 3 Cf. Harvey, op. cit. pp. 6ff.
Page 517 note 1 The Economist, 30 September 1989.
Page 518 note 1 Financial Times (London), 21 09 1989.Google Scholar
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