Leaning towards bipolarization of changing regimes

After years of effective functioning, the intermediate exchange rate systems ended up becoming prone to suffering speculative attacks, as the process of financial integration advanced. The empirical evidence collected in this paper endorses the fact that the less strict pegged exchange rate systems, that is soft pegs, were the epicentre of the most of exchange rate crises during `90's in Europe, Latin America and Eastern Asia. Consequently, intermediate systems and, especially soft pegs, have lost credit to the benefit of more extreme systems of exchange rate spectrum. This paper contributes new evidence on the tendency toward the bipolarization of the exchange rate systems and studies their evolution between 1990 and 2004, both in the advanced economies and in the emerging economies most integrated in the international capital markets.