The experience of the 1990s suggests that, in the context of rapid international capital mobility, sustaining a fixed exchange rate in the face of domestic policy imbalances or international financial market shocks is very difficult, and a forced abandonment of a pegged rate under pressure has proved quite disruptive.
To provide greater stability to fixed-rate regimes, some countries have adopted currency board systems or moved to full-blown dollarization. However, such moves are by no means panaceas, as evidenced by Argentina's current difficulties. Considerably more countries have moved in the opposite direction--toward more freely floating exchange rates--often following experiences in which their pegged exchange rates proved not to be viable.