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α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
This paper studies the conduct of monetary policy in economies with currency mismatch. To this end, I build a model that embeds financial frictions from households' collateralized borrowing in foreign currency into an open-economy Keynesian framework. The monetary authority faces a trade-off between traditional unemployment stabilization gains from currency depreciation and its costs in terms of generating debt deflation and tightening households' ability to borrow. The optimal policy under this trade-off results in macroeconomic patterns aligned with those observed in emerging-markets data, including large currency depreciation and consumption adjustments during crises. The optimal degree of “fear of floating” depends on the level of indebtedness with which the economy arrives to a crisis and on the type of experienced by the economy.