Foreign exchange holdings by central banks have increased significantly in the recent past. This article explains this development as a result of the liberalization of international capital markets. First, central banks accumulate reserves in order to protect the economy from potentially...

This paper studies how the maturity structure of external debt is affected by international reserves and how they reinforce financial stability through a more crisis-resilient maturity structure. We show in an illustrative theoretical model that reserves lengthen the maturity of external debt...

Andreas Steiner assesses the relationships between global imbalances, financial crises, and central bank policies, with a specific focus on their reserves. His combination of a strictly international perspective with an analysis based on empirical research enables him to develop an analytical...

We analyse how reversals of several types of capital flows impact currency crises in emerging market and developing economies. Estimates of logit models show that reversals of (equity and debt) portfolio flows significantly increase the likelihood of currency crises in emerging market economies....