This paper aims at identifying the underlying reasons for substantial accumulation of foreign reserves, a strategy currently followed by a large number of countries. To this end, it first studies international liquidity conditions and individual country demand for reserves. It then analyses...

This paper investigates the long run behavior of real exchange rates in nineteen countries of Latin America over the period 1970 - 2006. Our data does not support the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis, implying that real shocks tend to have permanent effects on Latin America's real...