Dollarisation has been extensively debated and is often promoted as a viable monetary and exchange rate policy alternative for emerging economies. While most arguments for and against dollarisation are grounded in theory, there is a recognized scarcity of empirical evidence on the topic. This...

We propose a "debt view" to explain the dominant international role of the dollar and provide broad empirical support for it. Within a simple capital structure model in which firms optimally choose the currency composition of their debt, we derive conditions under which all firms issue debt in a...