IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/intecj/v20y2006i3p253-266.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The social cost of foreign exchange reserves

Author

Listed:
  • Dani Rodrik

Abstract

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30% of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign borrowing, the income loss to these countries amounts to close to 1% of GDP. Conditional on existing levels of short-term foreign borrowing, this does not seem too steep a price as an insurance premium against financial crises. But why developing countries have not tried harder to reduce short-term foreign liabilities in order to achieve the same level of liquidity (thereby paying a smaller cost in terms of reserve accumulation) remains an important puzzle.

Suggested Citation

  • Dani Rodrik, 2006. "The social cost of foreign exchange reserves," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 253-266.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:intecj:v:20:y:2006:i:3:p:253-266
    DOI: 10.1080/10168730600879331
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10168730600879331
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10168730600879331?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mr. Eswar S Prasad & Raghuram Rajan, 2005. "Controlled Capital Account Liberalization: A Proposal," IMF Policy Discussion Papers 2005/007, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Will Martin & Kym Anderson, 2006. "Agricultural Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6889.
    3. Fernando A. Broner & Guido Lorenzoni & Sergio L. Schmukler, 2013. "Why Do Emerging Economies Borrow Short Term?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 67-100, January.
    4. Joshua Aizenman & Jaewoo Lee, 2007. "International Reserves: Precautionary Versus Mercantilist Views, Theory and Evidence," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 191-214, April.
    5. Hutchison, Michael M. & Noy, Ilan, 2004. "Sudden Stops and the Mexican Wave: Currency Crises, Capital Flow Reversals and Output Loss in Emerging Markets," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt38j2b036, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    6. Mr. Romain Ranciere & Mr. Olivier D Jeanne, 2006. "The Optimal Level of International Reserves for Emerging Market Countries: Formulas and Applications," IMF Working Papers 2006/229, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Hutchison, Michael M. & Noy, Ilan, 2004. "Sudden Stops and the Mexican Wave: Currency Crises, Capital Flow Reversals and Output Loss in Emerging Markets," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt88m6g98w, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    8. Feldstein, Martin, 1999. "A Self-Help Guide for Emerging Markets," Scholarly Articles 2961700, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    9. Steven B. Kamin, 2002. "Identifying the role of moral hazard in international financial markets," International Finance Discussion Papers 736, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Hutchison, Michael M. & Noy, Ilan, 2006. "Sudden stops and the Mexican wave: Currency crises, capital flow reversals and output loss in emerging markets," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 225-248, February.
    11. Mr. Joshua Aizenman & Mr. Jaewoo Lee, 2005. "International Reserves: Precautionary vs. Mercantilist Views, Theory and Evidence," IMF Working Papers 2005/198, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Mr. David Hauner, 2005. "A Fiscal Price Tag for International Reserves," IMF Working Papers 2005/081, International Monetary Fund.
    13. repec:bge:wpaper:185 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Olivier Jeanne & Romain Rancière, 2011. "The Optimal Level of International Reserves For Emerging Market Countries: A New Formula and Some Applications," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(555), pages 905-930, September.
    2. Javier Bianchi & Juan Carlos Hatchondo & Leonardo Martinez, 2018. "International Reserves and Rollover Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2629-2670, September.
    3. Marcello Spanò, 2013. "Foreign Reserves as Hedging Instruments in Emerging Countries," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 60(2), pages 203-230, April.
    4. Marcello Spanò, 2012. "The Effect Of Openness On Foreign Reserves And Growth In The Emerging Economies," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1, pages 7-23, March.
    5. Joshua Aizenman & Brian Pinto, 2013. "Managing Financial Integration and Capital Mobility—Policy Lessons from the Past Two Decades," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 636-653, September.
    6. Olivier Jeanne, 2007. "International Reserves in Emerging Market Countries: Too Much of a Good Thing?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 38(1), pages 1-80.
    7. Edwards, Sebastian, 2007. "Capital controls, capital flow contractions, and macroeconomic vulnerability," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 814-840, September.
    8. Ho-don Yan & Cheng-lang Yang, 2012. "Does an Undervalued Currency Merit Economic Growth? – Evidence from Taiwan," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 59(1), pages 37-57, March.
    9. Aizenman, Joshua, 2019. "A modern reincarnation of Mundell-Fleming's trilemma," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 444-454.
    10. Alfaro, Laura & Kanczuk, Fabio, 2009. "Optimal reserve management and sovereign debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 23-36, February.
    11. Mr. Romain Ranciere & Mr. Olivier D Jeanne, 2006. "The Optimal Level of International Reserves for Emerging Market Countries: Formulas and Applications," IMF Working Papers 2006/229, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Enrique Alberola & José María Serena, 2007. "Global financial integration, monetary policy and reserve accumulation. Assessing the limits in emerging economies," Working Papers 0706, Banco de España.
    13. Daniela Magalhães Prates & André Moreira Cunha & Marcos T. C. Lélis, 2008. "A gestão do regime de câmbio flutuante no Brasil," Anais do XXXVI Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 36th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 200807211144430, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    14. Cunha, André Moreira & Lélis, Marcos Tadeo Caputi & Prates, Daniela Magalhães, 2009. "Exchange-rate management in Brazil," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    15. Eduardo Levy Yeyati, 2019. "The Cost of Holding Foreign Exchange Reserves," CID Working Papers 353, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    16. Aizenman, Joshua & Pinto, Brian & Sushko, Vladyslav, 2013. "Financial sector ups and downs and the real sector in the open economy: Up by the stairs, down by the parachute," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 1-30.
    17. Joshua Aizenman & Reuven Glick, 2014. "Asset Class Diversification and Delegation of Responsibilities between a Central Bank of Sovereign Wealth Fund," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 10(3), pages 129-161, September.
    18. Cowan, Kevin & Raddatz, Claudio, 2013. "Sudden stops and financial frictions: Evidence from industry-level data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 99-128.
    19. Piersanti, Giovanni, 2012. "The Macroeconomic Theory of Exchange Rate Crises," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653126.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Reserves; external debt;

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:intecj:v:20:y:2006:i:3:p:253-266. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RIEJ20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.