Hiro Ito and Robert McCauley have compiled a new dataset of the currency composition of international reserves over the 1999-2020 period.
Category Archives: exchange rates
“Do Central Banks Rebalance Their Currency Shares?”
Some do; some don’t. Revised paper by me, Hiro Ito, and Robert McCauley. From the abstract:
Review of Subacchi, “The People’s Money: How China Is Building a Global Currency”
For those interested in the RMB, here’s my book review:
Everything Is Relative
From CNN Business, Dollar doldrums are back as inflation worries heat up:
Steel Tariffs and Iron/Steel Prices
The Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum were a bad idea during the Trump administration. They’re still a bad idea.
Guest Contribution: “What Three Economists Taught Us About Currency Arrangements”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. A shorter version appeared at Project Syndicate.
Macroeconomic Competitiveness
Competitiveness is often appealed to in popular discourse, but seldom defined. In macroeconomics, competitiveness is usually interpreted as cost competitiveness. Chinn and Johnston (JPAM, 1994) discuss the topic at length. Here is the OECD’s measure of cost competitiveness since 1999, along with the Fed’s CPI deflated measure of the dollar against a broad basket of currencies.
The Dollar Depreciates – And That’s a Good Thing
Interesting to note that the dollar has declined in tandem with economic policy uncertainty, as measured by the Baker, Bloom & Davis index (and predicted by historical correlations).
Treasury Secretary Designate Yellen on the Dollar
From Reuters today:
“The value of the U.S. dollar and other currencies should be determined by markets. Markets adjust to reflect variations in economic performance and generally facilitate adjustments in the global economy”, Yellen will say, if asked about the incoming administration’s dollar policy, according to the report.
“Is a Dollar Crash Coming?”
That’s the title of a symposium in The International Economy, with Anders Åslund, Scott K.H. Bessent, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, Jill Carlson, Stephen G. Cecchetti, Menzie D. Chinn, Lorenzo Codogno, Tim Congdon, Marek Dabrowski, Mohamed A. El-Erian, Heiner Flassbeck, Takeshi Fujimaki, Joseph E. Gagnon, James K. Galbraith, James E. Glassman, Michael Hüther, Richard Jerram, Gary N. Kleiman, Anne O. Krueger, Mickey D. Levy, Thomas Mayer, Jim O’Neill, Adam S. Posen, Holger Schmieding, Derek Scissors, Mark Sobel, Makoto Utsumi, and Chen Zhao.