Financial stability contributes to the stability and growth of a nation. There has been a sharp growth in use or trading of derivatives in both mature and emerging markets. The Zimbabwean financial sector is still not trading in derivatives security, yet Zimbabwe Stock Exchange is among the...

Sovereign external assets (SEAs) comprise foreign exchange reserves and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). The global stock of reserves reached 7 $trn in the second quarter of 2008, but data on SWF are rather elusive. Our estimation puts the SWFs at around 2,5 $trn dollars by 2007 and in the last...

The massive stocks of foreign exchange reserves, mostly held in the form of U.S. T-bonds by emerging economies, are still an important puzzle. Why do emerging economies continue to willingly loan to the United States despite the low rates of return? We suggest that a dynamic general equilibrium...

Juxtaposing qualitative as well as quantitative facts across the broader African continent, the authors explore critical issues compounding developmental woes of the continent at the present. Despite the facts being on the fringes as explanations to the sluggish development of Africa, the...

The massive stocks of foreign exchange reserves, mostly held in the form of U.S. T-Bonds by emerging economies, are still an important puzzle. Why do emerging economies continue to willingly loan to the United States despite the low rates of return? We propose that a dynamic general equilibrium...

Central Bank participants at the BIS 2008 Open Economies Meeting in Punta del Este, Uruguay, discussed trends in capital flows since 2003 and their monetary and financial stability implications. Capital flows appear to be more benign today than in the past, partly because of a greater share of...

In this paper we connect the events of the last twelve months, "The Panic of 2008" as it has been called, to the demand for international reserves. In previous work, we have shown that international reserve demand can be rationalized by a central bank's desire to backstop the broad money supply...

The rapid growth of international reserves---a development concentrated in the emerging markets---remains a puzzle. In this paper we suggest that a model based on financial stability and financial openness goes far toward explaining reserve holdings in the modern era of globalized capital...

Capital account liberalization represents a frequent decision taken by the emergent countries in their integration process to the global economy. For the European Union members states, this is a necessary measure. If the capital flows assures the necessar

This paper looks at the empirical determinates of foreign currency reserve holdings across a panel of around 130 countries between 1980 and 2008. The paper builds on the existing literature by adopting a panel error-correction model specification and by extending the sample to include the recent...