Steve Hanke, the Johns Hopkins economist known as the “Money Doctor” for advising governments around the world on how to tame inflation through currency policy, says Venezuela should fully adopt the U.S. dollar — a change he describes as the largest currency switch since the euro’s debut in 1999, when 11 European countries retired their national currencies for the new single money.

Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, has been named a special advisor to Venezuela’s National Assembly. In an interview with Fortune’s Shawn Tully, he said his prescription for the country’s 400% inflation is full dollarization: abandoning both the bolivar and the central bank.

The logic is to eliminate the risk of a central bank printing money to help the government pay its bills, a practice that stokes higher prices.

“Taming inflation is the key to restoring stability in Venezuela, and all the other progress flows from that,” Hanke explained. “Stability isn’t everything, but without stability, which means stable prices, you have nothing. And there’s no better case study showing that’s true than Venezuela.”

His track record informs that view. Hanke persuaded Montenegro in 1999 to dump the Yugoslav dinar in favor of the Deutschemark. A year later, he oversaw Ecuador’s switch from the sucre to the U.S. dollar — the first dollarization in Latin America since Panama a century earlier. Ecuador has kept the dollar ever since, as has El Salvador, which followed in 2001. In 2009, he became an informal advisor to the prime minister of Zimbabwe as the country dollarized and reined in inflation; a new government ditched the dollar in 2013, and hyperinflation returned.

Venezuela marks Hanke’s second attempt. His plan for a currency board in the mid-1990s — an arrangement under which bolivars would have been issued only when fully backed by U.S. dollars at a fixed exchange rate — failed to win a majority in the National Assembly. This time, he puts the odds of dollarization being approved at 50% to 80%.

“It would be the biggest switch from domestic currencies to an alternative since the introduction of the euro in 1999,” he told Fortune’s Tully.

The dollar is, in fact, already an integral part of the Venezuelan economy. Venezuelans gravitated to the greenback through years of hyperinflation that began in 2017 — an episode the International Monetary Fund at one point projected would reach one million percent — and through two redenominations, in 2018 and 2021, that stripped zeros from the bolivar. The shift took hold after authorities relaxed long-standing currency controls in 2019, letting businesses price and collect payment in dollars. The bolivar has tanked 78% against the greenback over the past year alone, and most consumers now buy virtually everything with dollars. Nearly everyone who neither works for the government nor receives public aid or pensions uses the U.S. currency. Hanke said this “spontaneous dollarization” raises the chances of an official currency switch.

Formalizing that arrangement still faces daunting obstacles. Venezuela would lose its central bank, which acts as a lender of last resort, and would essentially hand monetary policy over to the Federal Reserve, which sets interest rates with conditions in the United States in mind.

Argentina offers a cautionary parallel. President Javier Milei campaigned on dollarization but backed away from the idea after taking office. Although he cooled inflation sharply by slashing subsidies and the budget deficit, the annual rate remains high, and Argentina must continue defending its dollar-pegged peso. Regional elections last year that crushed Milei’s party sent the peso into a tailspin, prompting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to step in with a currency swap line.

Hanke nonetheless sees dollarization as the key to unlocking Venezuela’s economy, which is highly dependent on oil exports. The country holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, according to OPEC figures. He predicted a currency switch would induce a big surge of foreign investment into the oil sector.

Then there is the $250 billion in Venezuelan debt, equivalent to about 150% of GDP. Hanke said increased production would provide the dollars needed to pay the principal and interest. The end of hyperinflation would also lower interest rates, he added, encouraging a wave of borrowing by consumers and businesses that could in turn ignite the housing market and drive domestic investment.

“If it happens soon, Venezuela would take off from negative growth this year to positive growth next year,” Hanke said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.