Some small open Least Income Countries embarked on rapid accumulation of foreign reserves in the wake of volatile capital inflows. Foreign reserve accumulation is one way of managing volatile capital flows. However, rapid and persistent accumulation is not only costly, but potentially distort...

This document analyzes the rationality of keeping international reserves, which are used as a type of insurance in the event of external financing problems and to mediate in the type of exchange rate. Here it is argued that it is not possible to separate both objectives. This explains why the...

The massive stocks of foreign exchange reserves, mostly held in the form of U.S. T-bonds by emerging economies, are still an important puzzle. Why do emerging economies continue to willingly loan to the United States despite the low rates of return? We suggest that a dynamic general equilibrium...

There is no standard rule for the definition of an “optimal level” of international reserves and several assumptions underlie the rationale behind holding reserves. There are various theoretical approaches, but no standard for the evaluation of the performance of “optimal level” models,...

We quantify the impact that central bank refinancing o perations a nd f unding f acilities had at reducing the banking sector's intrinsic fragility in the euro area in 2014-2019. We do so by constructing, estimating and calibrating a micro-structural model of imperfect competition in the banking...

This paper analyzes the effects of the extraordinary measures implemented by the Bank of Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic on financial conditions. For this purpose, we estimate a factoraugmented vector autoregressive (FAVAR) model for the period 2001-2021. Based on this model, we construct a...

We propose a small open economy model where agents borrow internationally and invest in liquid foreign assets to insure against liquidity shocks, which temporarily shut out the economy of short-term credit markets. Due to the presence of a pecuniary externality individual agents borrow too much...