IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2019-052.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Determinants of Currency Composition of Reserves: a Portfolio Theory Approach with an Application to RMB

Author

Listed:
  • Miss Yinqiu Lu
  • Yilin Wang

Abstract

The way central banks manage their foreign reserve assets has evolved over the past decades. One major trend is managing reserves in two or more tranches—liquidity tranche and investment tranche—especially for those with adequate reserves. Incorporating reserve tranching, we have developed in this paper a central bank’s reserve portfolio choice model to analyze the determinants of the currency composition of reserves. In particular, we adopt the classical mean-variance framework for the investment tranche and the asset-liability framework for the liquidity tranche. Building on these frameworks, the roles of currency compositions in imports invoicing and short-term external debt, and risk and returns of reserve currencies can be quantified by our structural model—a key contribution of our paper given the absence of structural models in the literature. Finally, we estimate the potential paths of the share of RMB in reserves under different scenarios to shed light on its status as an international currency.

Suggested Citation

  • Miss Yinqiu Lu & Yilin Wang, 2019. "Determinants of Currency Composition of Reserves: a Portfolio Theory Approach with an Application to RMB," IMF Working Papers 2019/052, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2019/052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=46653
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Papaioannou, Elias & Portes, Richard & Siourounis, Gregorios, 2006. "Optimal currency shares in international reserves: The impact of the euro and the prospects for the dollar," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 508-547, December.
    2. Frankel, Jeffrey, 2012. "Internationalization of the RMB and Historical Precedents," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 27, pages 329-365.
    3. Hélène Rey, 2001. "International Trade and Currency Exchange," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(2), pages 443-464.
    4. Robert N McCauley & Tracy Chan, 2014. "Currency movements drive reserve composition," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    5. Ito, Hiroyuki & McCauley, Robert N. & Chan, Tracy, 2015. "Currency composition of reserves, trade invoicing and currency movements," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 16-29.
    6. Srichander Ramaswamy, 1999. "Reserve currency allocation: an alternative methodology," BIS Working Papers 72, Bank for International Settlements.
    7. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Shang-Jin Wei, 1994. "Yen Bloc or Dollar Bloc? Exchange Rate Policies of the East Asian Economies," NBER Chapters, in: Macroeconomic Linkage: Savings, Exchange Rates, and Capital Flows, pages 295-333, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Zhang, Zhichao & Chau, Frankie & Xie, Li, 2012. "Strategic Asset Allocation for Central Bank’s Management of Foreign Reserves: A new approach," MPRA Paper 43654, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Subramanian Arvind & Kessler Martin, 2013. "The Renminbi Bloc is Here: Asia Down, Rest of the World to Go?1)," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 49-94, August.
    10. Mervin Merkowsky & Eric Wolfe, 2015. "Recent Enhancements to the Management of Canada’s Foreign Exchange Reserves," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2015(Autumn), pages 50-56.
    11. Paul R. Krugman, 1984. "The International Role of the Dollar: Theory and Prospect," NBER Chapters, in: Exchange Rate Theory and Practice, pages 261-278, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. John Nugee, 2000. "Foreign Exchange Reserves Management," Handbooks, Centre for Central Banking Studies, Bank of England, number 19, April.
    13. Christian Vallence, 2012. "Foreign Exchange Reserves and the Reserve Bank’s Balance Sheet," RBA Bulletin (Print copy discontinued), Reserve Bank of Australia, pages 57-64, December.
    14. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Helene Rey & Nicolas Govillot, 2010. "Exorbitant Privilege and Exorbitant Duty," IMES Discussion Paper Series 10-E-20, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    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. Ito, Hiro & McCauley, Robert N., 2020. "Currency composition of foreign exchange reserves," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    2. Lu, Dong & Qian, Xingwang & Zhu, Wenyu, 2024. "External debt currency denomination and the currency composition of foreign exchange reserves," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    3. Jochen Schanz, 2019. "Reserve management in emerging market economies: trends and challenges," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Reserve management and FX intervention, volume 104, pages 45-55, Bank for International Settlements.
    4. Mario L. Torriani & Pablo Orazi & Matias Vicens, 2022. "Strategic Asset Allocation of a Reserves’ Portfolio: Hedging Against Shocks," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 33(5), pages 973-995, November.
    5. J. Peter Leo Deepak & Yavana Rani Subramanian & J. Josephine Lalitha & K. Vidhya, 2024. "Optimum Level of Currency Reserves: Investigation and Forecasting of Indian Rupee Using ARIMA Model," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 20(1), pages 137-150, August.
    6. Mateane, Lebogang, 2020. "Risk preferences, global market conditions and foreign debt: Is there any role for the currency composition of FX reserves?," EconStor Preprints 227484, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    7. Lu, Dong & Mu, Yuhao, 2023. "A parsimonious model of trade, finance and endogenous currency choices in international reserves," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    8. Fabiani, Josefina & Fidora, Michael & Setzer, Ralph & Westphal, Andreas & Zorell, Nico, 2021. "Sudden stops and asset purchase programmes in the euro area," Working Paper Series 2597, European Central Bank.
    9. Chinn, Menzie D. & Ito, Hiro & McCauley, Robert N., 2022. "Do central banks rebalance their currency shares?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    10. Yin-Wong Cheung, 2023. "A decade of RMB internationalisation," Economic and Political Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 47-74, January.
    11. 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.
    12. Mateane, Lebogang, 2023. "Risk preferences, global market conditions and foreign debt: Is there any role for the currency composition of FX reserves?," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 402-418.

    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. Mateane, Lebogang, 2020. "Risk preferences, global market conditions and foreign debt: Is there any role for the currency composition of FX reserves?," EconStor Preprints 227484, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Ito, Hiro & McCauley, Robert N., 2019. "A key currency view of global imbalances," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 97-115.
    3. Ito, Hiro & McCauley, Robert N., 2020. "Currency composition of foreign exchange reserves," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    4. Eichengreen, Barry & Flandreau, Marc & Mehl, Arnaud & Chitu, Livia, 2017. "International Currencies Past, Present, and Future: Two Views from Economic History," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190659455.
    5. Chinn, Menzie D. & Ito, Hiro & McCauley, Robert N., 2022. "Do central banks rebalance their currency shares?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    6. Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, 2015. "The euro as an international currency," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-01299083, HAL.
    7. Zhang, Cathy, 2014. "An information-based theory of international currency," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 286-301.
    8. Gabriele Galati & Philip Wooldridge, 2009. "The euro as a reserve currency: a challenge to the pre-eminence of the US dollar?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 1-23.
    9. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Hélène Rey & Maxime Sauzet, 2019. "The International Monetary and Financial System," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 859-893, August.
    10. Robert N McCauley & Chang Shu, 2018. "Recent RMB policy and currency co-movements," BIS Working Papers 727, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Subramanian Arvind & Kessler Martin, 2013. "The Renminbi Bloc is Here: Asia Down, Rest of the World to Go?1)," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 49-94, August.
    12. Liu, Tao & Wang, Xiaosong & Woo, Wing Thye, 2019. "The road to currency internationalization: Global perspectives and chinese experience," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 73-101.
    13. Sergey Narkevich & Pavel Trunin, 2012. "Reserve Currencies: Factors of Evolution and their Role in the World Economy," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 162P.
    14. Mateane, Lebogang, 2023. "Risk preferences, global market conditions and foreign debt: Is there any role for the currency composition of FX reserves?," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 402-418.
    15. Narkevich, Siarhei & Trunin, Pavel, 2013. "Prospects for the Russian Ruble as a Regional Reserve Currency," Published Papers dok2, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    16. Menzie Chinn & Jeffrey A. Frankel, 2007. "Will the Euro Eventually Surpass the Dollar as Leading International Reserve Currency?," NBER Chapters, in: G7 Current Account Imbalances: Sustainability and Adjustment, pages 283-338, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Pavel Trunin & Sergey Narkevich, 2013. "Prospects for the Russian Ruble to Become Regional Reserve Currency," Working Papers 118, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2015.
    18. Barry Eichengreen & Domenico Lombardi, 2017. "RMBI or RMBR? Is the Renminbi Destined to Become a Global or Regional Currency?," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 16(1), pages 35-59, Winter/Sp.
    19. Kawai, Masahiro & Pontines, Victor, 2016. "Is there really a renminbi bloc in Asia?: A modified Frankel–Wei approach," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 72-97.
    20. Masahiro Kawai, 2014. "Asian Monetary Integration : A Japanese Perspective," Macroeconomics Working Papers 24158, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2019/052. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.