We use data on announced and actual exchange rate arrangements to ask which countries follow de facto regimes different from their de iure ones, that is, do not do what they say. Our results suggest that countries with poor institutional quality have difficulty in maintaining pegging and abandon it often. In contrast, many countries with relatively good institutions display fear of floating, that is, they manage more than announced, perhaps to signal their differences from those countries

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... ble of maintaining promises of monetary stability. (JEL: F3, O1) Federico Sturzenegger and Jay Shambaugh for sharing their own data. Alan Krueger, two referees, Frank Schneider, Fritz Schneider, Gustavo Suarez, Adam Szeidl, and seminar participants at Harvard gave us useful comments. Martin Kanz and Priyanka Malhotra were excellent research assistants.