Precautionary and mercantilist approaches to demand for international reserves: an empirical investigation in the Indian context

This paper empirically investigates the importance of precautionary and mercantilist approaches to international reserves in the Indian context using monthly data from 1993:06 to 2007:03. The ARDL approach to cointegration is used to estimate as in the long-run relationship between reserves and its determinants. The empirical results show that the impact of the volatility of Foreign Institutional Investment which captures the precautionary motive, and that of undervalued real exchange rate which is associated with the mercantilist view on reserves are statistically significant in the long run. We conclude that both the precautionary and mercantilist motives explain reserve accumulation in India over the study period.