What Does the Exchange Rate Do? A Status Symbol?

This paper aims to assess the harmful impacts of exchange rate depreciations on Pakistan’s economy, including impacts on international capital movements, wages, the domestic price level, and development. Devaluation of a currency in terms of foreign currencies or metallic standards was for long considered to be undesirable and, if unavoidable, a sign of failure. Attitudes have since changed and devaluation is thought to bring advantages, especially by making economies more competitive exporters. This paper is intended to show that it has disadvantages that outweigh any supposed advantages, notably its effects on inflation, income distribution, service on foreign debt and incentives. It does so by describing in concrete terms the relations between foreign and domestic prices and the costs of untradeable goods and services that are components of the price of any good in any domestic price index. It also discusses the motives, official and unofficial, that have prompted the monetary authorities of Pakistan to make a practice of regular depreciation of the rupee and to question their justification.