The U.S. dollar holds a dominant place in the invoicing of international trade. In addition to a direct role for most U.S. exports and imports, it plays a global role for trade flows outside the United States. Using a simple center-periphery model, we show that this global role magnifies the...

The vast empirical exchange rate literature finds the effect of exchange rate volatility on real activity to be small or insignificant. In contrast, this paper offers empirical evidence that real exchange rate volatility can have a significant impact on productivity growth. However, the effect...