We construct a two-country New Keynesian model in which US government debt has an advantage as a superior collateral asset in the balance sheets of banks. The model can account for the observed response of the US dollar and US bond returns to a global downturn, in particular when the downturn is...

This paper studies the interaction between foreign exchange reserves and the currency composition of sovereign debt in emerging countries. Focusing on inflation targeting countries, we find that holdings of foreign reserves are associated with higher local currency sovereign debt, an exchange...