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How China's Holdings of Foreign Reserves Affect the Value of the US Dollar in Europe and Asia

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  • Jonathan E. Leightner

Abstract

By January 2009, China held almost US$2tn in foreign reserves. The present paper estimates the marginal effect of China changing its holdings of foreign reserves on the value of the US dollar in Europe and Asia. Because using traditional techniques to find this estimate would be inappropriate due to severe problems resulting from omitted variables, the present paper uses a new approach, bidirectional‐reiterative truncated projected least squares, that has been proven to minimize problems associated with omitted variables. It is found that if China would sell 1 percent of its foreign reserves, then the value of the US dollar would fall by 0.44 percent. With such a large effect, China has an incentive to either not sell any of its US dollar reserves or sell all of its US dollar reserves.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan E. Leightner, 2010. "How China's Holdings of Foreign Reserves Affect the Value of the US Dollar in Europe and Asia," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 18(3), pages 24-39, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:18:y:2010:i:3:p:24-39
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-124X.2010.01194.x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joshua Aizenman & Daniel Riera-Crichton, 2008. "Real Exchange Rate and International Reserves in an Era of Growing Financial and Trade Integration," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 812-815, November.
    2. Alfaro, Laura & Kanczuk, Fabio, 2009. "Optimal reserve management and sovereign debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 23-36, February.
    3. Jonathan Leightner, 2005. "The Productivity of Government Spending in Asia: 1983–2000," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 33-46, January.
    4. Jonathan E. Leightner, 2007. "Omitted Variables, Confidence Intervals, And The Productivity Of Exchange Rates," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 15-45, February.
    5. Leightner, Jonathan E. & Inoue, Tomoo, 2008. "Capturing climate's effect on pollution abatement with an improved solution to the omitted variables problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 191(2), pages 540-557, December.
    6. Jonathan Leightner & Tomoo Inoue, 2009. "Negative fiscal multipliers exceed positive multipliers during Japanese deflation," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(15), pages 1523-1527.
    7. Leightner, Jonathan E. & Inoue, Tomoo, 2007. "Tackling the omitted variables problem without the strong assumptions of proxies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 178(3), pages 819-840, May.
    8. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold & Clara Vega, 2003. "Micro Effects of Macro Announcements: Real-Time Price Discovery in Foreign Exchange," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 38-62, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. John Knight & Wei Wang, 2011. "China’s Macroeconomic Imbalances: Causes and Consequences," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(9), pages 1476-1506, September.
    2. Kristina Spantig, 2012. "International monetary policy spillovers in an asymmetric world monetary system - The United States and China," Global Financial Markets Working Paper Series 2012-33, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    3. John Knight & Wei Wang, 2011. "China’s Macroeconomic Imbalances: Causes and Consequences," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(9), pages 1476-1506, September.
    4. Jonathan E. Leightner, 2013. "The Changing Effectiveness of Monetary Policy," Economies, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-16, November.

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