This policy brief presents a new comprehensive dataset on the currency compositions of international reserves of 64 economies from 1996 to 2023. The dataset contains country-specific shares in international reserves for the eight major international currencies, i.e. the United States Dollar...

During recent years, central banks have increased the levels of their international reserves at an unprecedented pace. In this paper, we introduce new country-specific reserve data and examine determinants of the composition of international reserves. Using a dataset of 36 countries (and the...

We analyze a large merger in the Dutch banking market during the financial crisis using disaggregated data. Based on a merger simulation model, we evaluate merger-induced changes in the interest rates for savings accounts. We find that the merging banks decreased interest rates by 3 to 5 percent...