Devaluation is a reduction in the value of a currency with respect to other monetary units. A currency is a unit of exchange, facilitating the transfer of Goods and/or services It is one form of Money, where money is In common modern usage, it specifically implies an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange rate system, by which the monetary authority formally sets a new fixed rate with respect to a foreign reference currency. A fixed exchange rate, sometimes called a pegged exchange rate, is a type of Exchange rate regime wherein a Currency 's value is matched to the value of In contrast, (currency) depreciation is most often used for the unofficial decrease in the exchange rate in a floating exchange rate system. Currency depreciation is the loss of value of a country's currency with respect to one or more foreign reference currencies typically in a Floating exchange rate system Floating rate may also refer to a Floating interest rate applied to a Loan or other lending product The opposite of devaluation is called revaluation.
Depreciation and devaluation are sometimes used interchangeably, but they always refer to values in terms of other currencies. Inflation, on the other hand, refers to the value of the currency in goods and services (related to its purchasing power). In economics inflation or price inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services over a period of time Purchasing power is the amount of value of a good/services compared to the amount paid with a Currency.
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Historical usage
Devaluation is most often used in situations where a currency has a defined value relative to the baseline. Historically, early currencies were typically coins stamped from gold or silver by an issuing authority which certified the weight and purity of the precious metal. main - title Coin keywords numismatics coin review In the Physical sciences weight is a Measurement of the gravitational Force acting on an object A government in need of money and short on precious metal might abruptly lower the weight or purity of the coins without announcing this, or else decree that the new coins had equal value to the old, thus devaluing the currency. This gave rise to Copernicus-Gresham's Law, which stated that "bad money drives out good", i. Gresham's law is commonly stated "Bad money drives out good e. , if pure gold coins and false coins are decreed to have equal value, people will use the false coins for currency and hide the good coins or melt them down into gold.
Later, paper currencies were issued, and governments decreed them to be redeemable for gold or silver (a gold standard). The gold standard is a monetary system in which a region's common media of exchange are paper notes that are normally freely convertible into pre-set fixed quantities of Gold Again, a government short on gold or silver might devalue by abruptly decreeing a reduction in the currency's redemption value, reducing the value of everyone's holdings. Naturally, a government which made a habit of doing this would lead its citizens to hold gold or silver in place of the government's notes, so such governments would often outlaw private hoarding of precious metal in order to prevent Gresham's Law from taking effect.
Devaluation in modern economies
Present day currencies are usually fiat currencies with insignificant inherent value. The terms fiat currency and fiat money relate to types of currency or Money whose usefulness results not from any intrinsic value or guarantee that it can be The value of currency is determined by the interplay of money supply and money demand. As some countries hold floating exchange rates, others maintain fixed exchange rate policy against the United States dollar or other major currencies. The United States dollar ( sign: $; code: USD) is the unit of Currency of the United States; it has also been These fixed rates are usually maintained by a combination of legally enforced capital controls or through government trading of foreign currency reserves to manipulate the money supply. In Economics, capital control is the Monetary policy device that a country's government (i Under fixed exchange rates, persistent capital outflows or trade deficits may lead countries to lower or abandon their fixed rate policy, resulting in a devaluation (as persistent surpluses and capital inflows may lead them towards revaluation). The balance of trade (or net exports, sometimes symbolized as NX) is the difference between the monetary value of Exports and imports in an However, that a devaluation would reduce trade deficits depends on fulfilling the Marshall-Lerner Condition: the sum of exports and imports elasticities (in absolute value) must be greater than 1. This condition says that for a Currency Devaluation to have a positive impact in Trade balance, the sum of price elasticity of Exports and In Mathematics, the absolute value (or modulus) of a Real number is its numerical value without regard to its sign.
In an open market, the perception that a devaluation is imminent may lead speculators to sell the currency in exchange for the country's foreign reserves, increasing pressure on the issuing country to make an actual devaluation. When speculators buy out all of the foreign reserves, a balance of payments crisis occurs. Economists Paul Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld present a theoretical model in which they state that the balance of payments crisis occurs when the real exchange rate (exchange rate adjusted for relative price differences between countries) is equal to the nominal exchange rate (the stated rate) (Krugman, Paul and Maurice Obstfeld. Paul Robin Krugman ( born February 28 1953 is an American Economist, Columnist, Author, and Intellectual. Maurice Moses "Maury" Obstfeld is an American Economist, born in 1952 International Economics (2000), Chapter 17 [Appendix II]). In practice, the onset of crisis has typically occurred after the real exchange rate has depreciated below the nominal rate. The reason for this is that speculators do not have perfect information; they sometimes find out that a country is low on foreign reserves well after the real exchange rate has fallen. In these circumstances, the currency value will fall very far very rapidly. This is what occurred during the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico. The 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, widely known as the Mexican peso crisis, was triggered by the sudden Devaluation of the Mexican peso in the early
Generally, a steady process of inflation is not considered a devaluation, although if a currency has a high level of inflation, its value will naturally fall against gold or foreign currencies. Especially where a country deliberately prints money (a usual cause of hyperinflation) to cover a persistent budget deficit without borrowing, this may be considered a devaluation. Certain figures in this article use Scientific notation for readability
In some cases, a country may revalue its currency higher (the opposite of devaluation) in response to positive economic conditions, to lower inflation, or to please investors and trading partners. This would imply that existing currency increased in value, as opposed to the case where a country issues a new currency to replace an old currency that had declined excessively in value (such as Turkey and Romania in 2005, Argentina in 2002, Russia in 1998, or Germany in 1923). The Lira ( Turkish Türk lirası or TL) was the currency of Turkey until 2005 The leu ( plural lei; ISO 4217 code RON numeric code 946 is the currency of Romania. The peso (originally established as the nuevo peso argentino or peso convertible) is the currency of Argentina. The ruble or rouble (рубль rublʹ, plural ru рубли́ rubli; see note on English spelling and Russian plurals with numbers Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe.
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In economics inflation or price inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services over a period of time Monetary policy is the process by which the Government, Central bank, or monetary authority of a country controls (i the Supply of Money, To act as a store of value, a Commodity, a form of Money, or Financial capital must be able to be reliably saved stored and retrieved - and be predictably Beggar thy neighbour, or beggar-my-neighbour policies are those that seek benefits for one country at the expense of othersDictionary
devaluation
-noun
- The removal or lessening of something's value.
- The intentional or deliberate lowering of a currency's value compared to another country's currency or a standard value -- the price of gold for example.
- Depreciation
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