There is often speculation that the international roles of currencies may be changing. This paper presents the current status of these roles. The U.S. dollar continues to be the dominant currency across various uses. Yet, such a role may change over time. If this occurs, there could be...

Theories of systemic risk suggest that financial intermediaries’ balance-sheet constraints amplify fundamental shocks. We provide supporting evidence for such theories by decomposing the U.S. dollar risk premium into components associated with macroeconomic fundamentals and a component...

Forward foreign exchange contracts embed not only expected depreciation but also a sizable premium, which complicates inferences about anticipated returns. This study derives arbitrage-free affine forward currency models (AFCMs) with closed-form expressions for both unobservable variables. Model...

Following a scarcity of dollar funding available internationally to financial institutions, in December 2007 the Federal Reserve began to establish or expand Temporary Reciprocal Currency Arrangements with fourteen other central banks. These central banks had the capacity to use the swap...

A growing body of research emphasizes the direct impact of exchange rate movements on the value of U.S. foreign assets. Because a substantial amount of U.S. assets are denominated in foreign currencies, a depreciation of the dollar leads to large capital gains. First, we present a detailed...

We examine the diffusion of real-time gross settlement (RTGS) technology across all 174 central banks. RTGS reduces settlement risk and facilitates financial innovation in the settlement of foreign exchange trades. In 1985, only three central banks had implemented RTGS systems, and by year-end...