Regional inflation and financial dollarisation

In this paper, we exploit variation in consumer price inflation across 71 Russian regions to examine the relationship between the perceived stability of the local currency and financial dollarisation. Our results show that regions with higher inflation experience an increase in the dollarisation of household deposits and a decrease in the dollarisation of (long-term) household credit. The negative impact of inflation on credit dollarisation is weaker in regions with less integrated banking markets, suggesting that the asset-liability management of banks constrains the currency-portfolio choices of households.