Before the crisis of 1997-98, the East Asian economies except for Japan but including China pegged their currencies to the U.S. dollar. To avoid further turmoil, the IMF now argues that these currencies should float more freely. However, our econometric estimations show that the dollar's...

We investigate the drivers of daily changes in the exchange value of the Chinese currency (CNY) since early 2016, when a new regime was introduced for setting the fix - the midpoint of the CNY's daily trading range against the U.S. dollar. Daily changes in the fix, which is announced just prior...

The share of U.S. dollar assets in the official foreign exchange reserve portfolios of central banks is sometimes taken as an indicator of dollar status. We show that the observed decline in the aggregate share of U.S. dollar assets does not stem from a systematic shift in currency preferences...

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...

Financial sanctions, alongside economic sanctions, are components of the toolkit used by governments as part of international diplomacy. The use of sanctions, especially financial, has increased over the last seventy years. Financial sanctions have been particularly important whenever the goals...

The main strength of today's international monetary system – its flexibility and adaptability to the different needs of its users – can also become its weakness, as it may contribute to unsustainable growth models and imbalances. The global financial crisis has shown that the system cannot...

To play the role of a unit of account, an international currency must be a currency widely used to invoice international trade. This paper investigates the determinants of the use of currency in trade invoicing and evaluates the potential of the renminbi for the denomination of cross-border...

The dominance of the US dollar in foreign exchange (FX) markets appears to reflect very strong network effects in the use of international currencies. What we observe today is the result of a slow-moving process that has witnessed a switch from the dominance of the pound sterling to the US...

Building on the facility design and application experience from the period of the global financial crisis, in March 2020 the Federal Reserve eased the terms on its standing swap lines in collaboration with other central banks, reactivated temporary swap agreements, and then introduced the new...

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, China has rolled out a number of initiatives to actively promote the international role of the renminbi and to denominate more of its international claims away from the US dollar and into the renminbi. This paper discusses the factors shaping the prospects...