The purpose of this paper is to show that macroeconomic impacts might be very different depending on what strategy developing countries will take. In the first part, we investigate what macroeconomic impacts an increased aversion to liquidity risk can have in a simple open economy model. When...

The sizable hoarding of international reserves by several East Asian countries has been frequently attributed to a modern version of monetary mercantilism -- hoarding international reserves in order to improve competitiveness. From a long-run perspective, manufacturing exporters in East Asia...

This paper tests the importance of precautionary and mercantilist motives in accounting for the hoarding of international reserves by developing countries, and provides a model that quantifies the welfare gains from optimal management of international reserves. While the variables associated...

Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves...

We evaluate the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) and recent structural changes in the patterns of hoarding international reserves (IR). We confirm that the determinants of IR hoarding evolve with developments in the global economy. During the pre-GFC period of 1999-2006, gross saving...

This paper analyzes competing interpretations for the large increases in the hoarding of international reserves by developing countries. While the first phase of the rapid hoarding of reserves in the aftermath of the East Asian crisis has been dominated by self insurance against exposure to...

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30 percent of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign...

This paper analyzes the international reserve-holding behavior of developing countries. It shows that political-economy considerations modify the optimal reserve level determined by efficiency criteria. A country characterized by volatile output, inelastic demand for fiscal outlays, high tax...

Contrary to what is suggested by the theory, most empirical studies on the demand for international reserves have failed to find a significant(negative) coefficient for the opportunity cost of holding reserves. In this paper it is argued that the reason for this is that the opportunity cost of...

Traditionally, two alternative explanations have been offered for the behavior of international reserves through time. On the one hand, the literature on the demand for international reserves postulates that reserves movements respond to discrepancies between desIred and actual reserves. Onthe...