Causas y Consecuencias de la Indización: Una Revisión de la Literatura

Indexation is common practice in both developed and developing countries. During recent years, however, many less developed economies that have implemented relatively successful stabilization plans, have included as part of the reform package wage nominalization and/or the use of the exchange rate as a nominal anchor. On the other hand, indexation of financial instruments, a practice that used to be the result of high inflation periods, has become a fashionable practice in more developed economies. This survey examines theoretical and empirical literature on three different types of indexation: wage, financial and exchange rate indexation. In contrast to other survey articles, our revision unifies the analysis of indexation in these three markets. First, we analyze the origin of each type of indexation, as well as their effects on the particular market where it is being applied, and on the economy as a whole. Second, we analyze the effect of each type of indexation on the inflation process, the economic authority's willingness to disinflate, and the costs of disinflating.