IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednls/98313.html

Some searches may not work properly. We apologize for the inconvenience.

   My bibliography  Save this paper

Taking Stock: Dollar Assets, Gold, and Official Foreign Exchange Reserves

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Global central banks and finance ministries held nearly $12 trillion of foreign exchange reserves as of the end of 2023, with nearly $7 trillion composed of U.S. dollar assets. Nevertheless, a narrative has emerged that an observed decline in the share of dollar assets in official reserve portfolios represents the leading edge of the dollar’s loss of status in the international monetary system. Some market participants have similarly linked the apparent increase in official demand for gold in recent years to a desire to diversify away from the U.S. dollar. Drawing on recent research and analytics, this post questions these narratives, arguing that these observed aggregate trends largely reflect the behavior of a small number of countries and do not represent a widespread effort by central banks to diversify away from dollars.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Douglass & Linda S. Goldberg & Oliver Zain Hannaoui, 2024. "Taking Stock: Dollar Assets, Gold, and Official Foreign Exchange Reserves," Liberty Street Economics 20240529, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:98313
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2024/05/taking-stock-dollar-assets-gold-and-official-foreign-exchange-reserves/
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    dollar; reserves; gold;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • F5 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
    • F6 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization

    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:fednls:98313. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.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.