It was the most theoretically sophisticated piece of the Plano Real and was based on a previous academic work by Pérsio Arida and André Lara Resende, the "Larida Plan", published in 1984.
It was conceived as a temporary instrument to break up the "psychological inertia" that had ingrained in the Brazilian mindset and which caused prices to keep rising as a consequence of subjective estimation of inflation or preemptive adjustment without cost assessment.
These phenomena are among the chief characteristics of hyperinflation, resulting from the erosion of confidence on the legal tender.
URVs were quoted in cruzeiros reais and its intrinsic value was pegged to three price indices and had a fixed parity of 1-to-1 to the daily U.S. dollar exchange rate.
For instance, banks were required to report balances on accounts in both currencies and contracts had to be rewritten to express prices in URVs.