This paper provides an historical perspective on reserve currency competition and on the prospects of the dollar as an international currency. It questions the conventional wisdom that competition for reserve-currency status is a winner-take-all game, showing that several currencies have often...

Undesirable real effects have been attributed to floating exchange rates in general, and the 1980-83 appreciation of the dollar in particular.In the appreciating country, the U.S., export industries lose competitiveness and so output falls. In the other country, say Europe, the exchange rate...

According to the efficient market hypothesis, news in Tokyo is responsible for the exchange rate changes during the Tokyo market hours, while the U.S. news is responsible for changes in the New York hours. The intra-daily dynamics of the $/yen exchange rate from December 1931 to November 1933 is...

Foreign exchange reserve accumulation has risen dramatically in recent years. The introduction of the euro, greater liquidity in other major currencies, and the rising current account deficits and external debt of the United States have increased the pressure on central banks to diversify away...

While the global financial crisis was centered in the United States, it led to a surprising appreciation in the dollar, suggesting global dollar illiquidity. In response, the Federal Reserve partnered with other central banks to inject dollars into the international financial system. Empirical...

This paper examines determinants of the international reserves (IR) currency composition before and after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Applying the annual data of 58 countries, we confirm that countries that trade more with the US, euro zone, UK, and Japan, and issue more debt denominated...

The Gold Pool (1961-1968) was one of the most ambitious cases of central bank cooperation in history. Major central banks pooled interventions – sharing profits and losses – to stabilize the dollar price of gold. Why did it collapse? From at least 1964, the fate of the Pool was in fact tied...

Following a scarcity of dollar funding available internationally to banks and financial institutions, starting in December 2007 the Federal Reserve established or expanded Temporary Reciprocal Currency Arrangements with fourteen foreign central banks. These central banks had the capacity to use...

This paper provides indirect tests of the hypothesis that exchange rate movements may be largely coterminus with changes in preferences for holding claims on different countries. It is argued that changes in country preferences will be reflected systematically in the price of gold and, hence,...

This paper studies the fluctuations of foreign exchange reserves under a regime of credibly fixed exchange rates. The paper considers a variety of assumptions on the determinants of money demand and currency substitution