Macroeconomic determinants of the demand for international reserves in Bangladesh

Recent financial crises have heightened the demand from emerging markets' and developing countries’ central banks for international reserves that can meet their emergency foreign currency liquidity needs at times of halts in capital flow. The necessity of reserves for weathering external shocks is well documented in the literature. Likewise, macroeconomic factors to determine the level of reserves have been central to many empirical studies. Motivated by Bangladesh’s stance in regard to reserve accumulation, we aim to investigate the macroeconomic determinants of the demand for international reserves in the country using quarterly data ranging from 1994Q2 to 2016Q4. We also examine the role of disequilibrium in the national money market in reserve movements during the same period. In addition, we check for a structural break associated with the exchange rate regime change in the reserves demand function. The Johansen cointegration test of reserve demand function reveals that the current account vulnerability and exchange rate flexibility play a crucial role in Bangladesh’s long-term reserve demand policies. However, reserves appear to be insensitive to economic size and opportunity cost. A single equation error correction estimate suggests that the monetary disequilibrium does not play a significant role in the short-term reserve movements. More importantly, a dynamic ordinary least-squares estimate suggests that switching to the flexible exchange rate regime in 2003 contributes to a structural change in the long-term reserve demand policies of Bangladesh. Since the empirical results suggest that Bangladesh’s reserve holding behavior is primarily driven by the precautionary motive, we propose that the country should continue to focus on increasing its reserve stock in relation to the current account vulnerability.