We document the rise of China in offshore capital markets. Chinese firms use global tax havens to access foreign capital both in equity and bond markets. In the last twenty years, China's presence went from raising a negligible amount of capital in these markets to accounting for more than half...

The "monetary trilemma" - the hypothesis that full monetary policy autonomy, exchange rate stability, and financial openness cannot simultaneously be achieved - has long been studied. Recently, holding international reserves (IR) has become an important policy instrument, insuring against...

We provide a liquidity-based theory for the dominant use of the US dollar as the unit of denomination in global debt contracts. Firms need to trade their revenue streams for the assets required to extinguish their debt obligations. When asset markets are illiquid, as modeled via endogenous...