Currency

About: Currency is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26697 publications have been published within this topic receiving 485370 citations. The topic is also known as: monetary unit & unit of money.

The Relationship between Exchange Rates and International Trade: A Literature Review

Abstract: This paper surveys a wide body of economic literature on the relationship between currencies and trade. Specifically, two main issues are investigated: the impact on international trade of exchange rate volatility and of currency misalignments. On average, exchange rate volatility has a negative (even if not large) impact on trade flows. The extent of this effect depends on a number of factors, including the existence of hedging instruments, the structure of production (e.g. the prevalence of small firms), and the degree of economic integration across countries. The second issue involves exchange rate misalignments, which are predicted to have short-run effects in models with price rigidities. However, the exact impact depends on a number of features, such as the pricing strategy of firms engaging in international trade and the importance of global production networks. This effect is predicted to disappear in the long-run, unless some other distortion characterizes the economy. Empirical results confirm that short-run effects can exist, but their size and persistence over time are not consistent across different studies.

Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance

Abstract: In his new book, Arvind Subramanian presents the following possibilities: What if, contrary to common belief, China's economic dominance is a present-day reality rather than a faraway possibility? What if the renminbi's takeover of the dollar as the world's reserve currency is not decades, but mere years, away? And what if the United States's economic pre-eminence is not, as many economists and policymakers would like to believe, in its own hands, but China's to determine? Subramanian's analysis is based on a new index of economic dominance grounded in a historical perspective. His examination makes use of real-world examples, comparing China's rise with the past hegemonies of Great Britain and the United States. His attempt to quantify and project economic and currency dominance leads him to the conclusion that China's dominance is not only more imminent, but also broader in scope, and much larger in magnitude, than is currently imagined. He explores the profound effect this might have on the United States, as well as on the global financial and trade system. Subramanian concludes with a series of policy proposals for other nations to reconcile China's rise with continued openness in the global economic order, and to insure against China becoming a malign hegemon.

Strategic Complementarities and the Twin Crises

Abstract: The economic literature has emphasized the role of strategic complementarities in generating banking crises and currency crises. Motivated by evidence from recent financial crises, we study a model, where strategic complementarities exist, not only within a group of creditors or within a group of currency speculators, but also between the two groups. The additional type of strategic complementarities generates a vicious cycle between banking crises and currency crises. This vicious cycle magnifies the correlation between the two crises and destabilizes the economy. We discuss some empirical implications and policy implications, and, in particular, show that due to the interaction between the banking sector and the currency market, a Lender of Last Resort might not be able to prevent bank runs.

The Institutions of Monetary Policy

Abstract: I argue that it is useful to think about the optimal design of monetary institutions using the insights from the theory of incomplete contracts. The core of the monetary policy problem is the uncertainty about future social decisions resulting from the impossibility and the undesirability of committing our successors to any given monetary policy strategy. The impossibility stems from the observation that collective decisions cannot be enforced so that it is impossible to commit to future collective decisions. The undesirability reflects the fact that we cannot articulate all possible future states of the world. Monetary institutions expand the possibility frontier of the technology of collective decisions by raising the costs of making inefficient deviations from pre-announced paths. I illustrate the importance of institutional design for the operation of monetary policy by reference to three case studies: the collapse of exchange rate regimes in Brazil and the United Kingdom; currency arrangements in Iraq and their reform after the 2003 war; and the relationship between central banks and governments when the zero constraint on nominal interest rates is binding.