The Power of International Reserves: the impossible trinity becomes possible

This aim of the present paper is to measure first, the degree of trilemma indexes: exchange rate stability, monetary independence capital account openness while taking into account the increase of hording IR ratio over GDP, over External Debt and over Short Term External Debt. The evolution of the trilemma indexes shows that countries applying de facto flexible Exchange Rate Regime (ERR) take advantage of the IR and become able to adopt a managed ERR that consist of achieving the three trilemma indexes simultaneously without renouncing to anyone of them. We found that different IR ratio could have different interpretations and different directions of monetary policies, where external debt should be taken into consideration in such study while using the IR. As for country that is applying a de facto fixed exchange rate regime, the IR (different ratio) do not play any role in changing the patter of the Mundell trilemma and do not intervene in monetary authority policies. This paper treats as well the normative aspects of the trilemma, relating the policy choices to macroeconomic outcomes such as the volatility of output growth. We found different results from country to another, while taking different ratios of measuring IR, concluding that the impact of IR on the output volatility could change due to the level of external debt and adopted exchange rate regime.