IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgif/1359.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Geopolitics and the U.S. Dollar's Future as a Reserve Currency

Author

Abstract

I survey the role of geopolitics and sanctions risk in shaping the U.S. dollar's status as the primary currency used for international reserves. Without changes in the economic incentives for holding FX reserves in U.S. dollar assets, an increased threat of sanctions is unlikely to drastically reduce the dollar share of FX reserves. Currently, around three-quarters of foreign government holdings of safe U.S. assets are by countries with some military tie to the U.S. Even a reduced reliance on the U.S. dollar for trade invoicing and debt denomination by a large bloc of countries less geopolitically aligned with the U.S. would be unlikely to end U.S. dollar dominance.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin Weiss, 2022. "Geopolitics and the U.S. Dollar's Future as a Reserve Currency," International Finance Discussion Papers 1359, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:1359
    DOI: 10.17016/IFDP.2022.1359
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/ifdp/files/ifdp1359.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/IFDP.2022.1359?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ethan Ilzetzki & Carmen M Reinhart & Kenneth S Rogoff, 2019. "Exchange Arrangements Entering the Twenty-First Century: Which Anchor will Hold?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 599-646.
    2. Alina Iancu & Gareth Anderson & Sakai Ando & Ethan Boswell & Andrea Gamba & Shushanik Hakobyan & Lusine Lusinyan & Neil Meads & Yiqun Wu, 2022. "Reserve Currencies in an Evolving International Monetary System," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 33(5), pages 879-915, November.
    3. Barry Eichengreen & Arnaud Mehl & Livia Chiţu & Thorsten Beck, 2019. "Mars or Mercury? The geopolitics of international currency choice," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 34(98), pages 315-363.
    4. Menzie Chinn & Jeffrey Frankel, 2008. "Why the Euro Will Rival the Dollar," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 49-73, May.
    5. Menzie Chinn & Jeffrey Frankel, 2008. "Why the Euro Will Rival the Dollar," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 49-73, May.
    6. Eichengreen, Barry & Macaire, Camille & Mehl, Arnaud & Monnet, Eric & Naef, Alain, 2022. "Is Capital Account Convertibility Required for the Renminbi to Acquire Reserve Currency Status?," CEPR Discussion Papers 17498, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Clayton, Christopher & Dos Santos, Amanda & Maggiori, Matteo & Schreger, Jesse, 2022. "Internationalizing Like China," Research Papers 4019, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    8. Mr. Serkan Arslanalp & Mr. Barry J. Eichengreen & Chima Simpson-Bell, 2022. "The Stealth Erosion of Dollar Dominance: Active Diversifiers and the Rise of Nontraditional Reserve Currencies," IMF Working Papers 2022/058, International Monetary Fund.
    9. Daniel McDowell, 2021. "Financial sanctions and political risk in the international currency system," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(3), pages 635-661, May.
    10. Carla Norrlof, 2014. "Dollar hegemony: A power analysis," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(5), pages 1042-1070, October.
    11. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Sebastian, Sannikov, Yuliy Merkel & Sebastian Merkel, 2021. "Debt as Safe Asset," CESifo Working Paper Series 9500, CESifo.
    12. Clayton, Christopher & Santos, Amanda Dos & Maggiori, Matteo & Schreger, Jesse, 2022. "Internationalizing Like China," SocArXiv r2msa, Center for Open Science.
    13. Michael P Dooley & David Folkerts Landau & Peter M Garber, 2022. "US Sanctions Reinforce the Dollar’s Dominance," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 33(5), pages 817-823, November.
    14. Mukhin, Dmitry, 2022. "An equilibrium model of the international price system," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112500, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Dmitry Mukhin, 2022. "An Equilibrium Model of the International Price System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(2), pages 650-688, February.
    16. Liugang Sheng, 2013. "Did China diversify its foreign reserves?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 102-125, January.
    17. Gita Gopinath & Jeremy C. Stein, 2018. "Trade Invoicing, Bank Funding, and Central Bank Reserve Holdings," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 542-546, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paweł Kowalewski & Dominik Skopiec, 2023. "Wzrost znaczenia złota w rezerwach dewizowych banków centralnych gospodarek wschodzących," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 54(3), pages 259-284.
    2. Medina Ayta Mohammed & Carmen De-Pablos-Heredero & José Luis Montes Botella, 2024. "The Role of Financial Sanctions and Financial Development Factors on Central Bank Digital Currency Implementation," FinTech, MDPI, vol. 3(1), pages 1-16, February.

    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. Alina Iancu & Gareth Anderson & Sakai Ando & Ethan Boswell & Andrea Gamba & Shushanik Hakobyan & Lusine Lusinyan & Neil Meads & Yiqun Wu, 2022. "Reserve Currencies in an Evolving International Monetary System," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 33(5), pages 879-915, November.
    2. Tao Liu & Dong Lu & Liang Wang, 2023. "Hegemony or Harmony? A Unified Framework for the International Monetary System," Working Papers 202305, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    3. Stefan Angrick, 2018. "Structural conditions for currency internationalization: international finance and the survival constraint," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(5), pages 699-725, September.
    4. Ito, Hiro & McCauley, Robert N., 2020. "Currency composition of foreign exchange reserves," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    5. Alan de Bromhead & David Jordan & Francis Kennedy & Jack Seddon, 2023. "Sterling's farewell symphony: The end of the Sterling Area revisited," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(2), pages 415-444, May.
    6. Arslanalp, Serkan & Eichengreen, Barry & Simpson-Bell, Chima, 2022. "The stealth erosion of dollar dominance and the rise of nontraditional reserve currencies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    7. Simone Auer, 2023. "Financial globalization and monetary transmission," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 721-760, May.
    8. Antoine Berthou, 2023. "International sanctions and the dollar: Evidence from trade invoicing," Working papers 924, Banque de France.
    9. Zhang, Chen & Fang, Ying & Niu, Linlin, 2022. "Changing anchor of the renminbi: A Bayesian learning approach to the decade-long transition," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    10. Seghezza, Elena & Morelli, Pierluigi, 2018. "Rule of law and balance of power sustain US dollar preeminence," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 16-36.
    11. Gerding, Felix & Hartley, Jonathan S., 2024. "De-dollarization? Not so fast," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    12. Mr. Camilo E Tovar Mora & Tania Mohd Nor, 2018. "Reserve Currency Blocs: A Changing International Monetary System?," IMF Working Papers 2018/020, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Pavel Aleksandrovich Minakir & Dmitriy Aleksandrovich Izotov, 2022. "World Money in Time and Space: A Blow to the Dollar or a Blow by the Dollar?," Spatial Economics=Prostranstvennaya Ekonomika, Economic Research Institute, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (Khabarovsk, Russia), issue 1, pages 7-33.
    14. Olk, Christopher, 2024. "How much a dollar cost: Currency hierarchy as a driver of ecologically unequal exchange," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    15. Boz, Emine & Casas, Camila & Georgiadis, Georgios & Gopinath, Gita & Le Mezo, Helena & Mehl, Arnaud & Nguyen, Tra, 2022. "Patterns of invoicing currency in global trade: New evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    16. Roger Vicquéry, 2022. "The Rise and Fall of Global Currencies over Two Centuries," Working papers 882, Banque de France.
    17. Ryan Chahrour & Rosen Valchev, 2024. "The Dollar in an Era of International Retrenchment," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 72(3), pages 1042-1080, September.
    18. Dal Bianco, Marcos & Camacho, Maximo & Perez Quiros, Gabriel, 2012. "Short-run forecasting of the euro-dollar exchange rate with economic fundamentals," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 377-396.
    19. Barry Eichengreen & Chitu Livia & Arnaud Mehl, 2014. "Stability or upheaval? The currency composition of international reserves in the long run," Globalization Institute Working Papers 201, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    20. Christian Thimann, 2010. "Global Roles of Currencies," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Wensheng Peng & Chang Shu (ed.), Currency Internationalization: Global Experiences and Implications for the Renminbi, chapter 1, pages 3-41, Palgrave Macmillan.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Foreign Exchange Reserves; Sanctions; Security Alliances;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedgif:1359. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    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.