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Concept
Devaluation
Summary
In macroeconomics and modern monetary policy, a devaluation is an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange-rate system, in which a monetary authority formally sets a lower exchange rate of the national currency in relation to a foreign reference currency or currency basket. The opposite of devaluation, a change in the exchange rate making the domestic currency more expensive, is called a revaluation. A monetary authority (e.g., a central bank) maintains a fixed value of its currency by being ready to buy or sell foreign currency with the domestic currency at a stated rate; a devaluation is an indication that the monetary authority will buy and sell foreign currency at a lower rate.
However, under a floating exchange rate system (in which exchange rates are determined by market forces acting on the foreign exchange market, and not by government or central bank policy actions), a decrease in a currency's value relative to other major currency benchmarks is instead called depreciation; likewise, an increase in the currency's value is called appreciation.
Related but distinct concepts include inflation, which is a market-determined decline in the value of the currency in terms of goods and services (related to its purchasing power). Altering the face value of a currency without reducing its exchange rate is a redenomination, not a devaluation or revaluation.
Devaluation is most often used in a situation where a currency has a defined value relative to the baseline. Historically, early currencies were typically coins, struck from gold or silver by an issuing authority, which certified the weight and purity of the precious metal. A government in need of money and short on precious metals might decrease the weight or purity of the coins without any announcement, or else decree that the new coins have equal value to the old, thus devaluing the currency. Later, with the issuing of paper currency as opposed to coins, governments decreed them to be redeemable for gold or silver (a gold standard).
Official source
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