Compositional Analysis of Foreign Currency Reserves in the 1999-2007 Period : The Euro vs. The Dollar as Leading Reserve Currency

Using a critical analysis of the acquired data, this article mainly aims to present the currency composition of the foreign currency reserves of central banks in selected countries in the 1999-2007 period and, on this basis, to establish whether the euro stands any real chances of dethroning the US dollar as the global currency. Among other things, the empirical results, for the most part overlapping with the theoretical and empirical expectations, confirm the hypothesis that in the near future the euro may be regarded as a global reserve currency on a par with the US dollar or it may even become the leading reserve currency. Finally, the empirical analysis also shows that the proportion of the euro in foreign currency reserves differs by the groups of countries concerned; however, in the period under scrutiny it was mainly increasing.