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.

Currency Unions and International Integration

Abstract: This paper characterizes the integration patterns of international currency unions (such as the CFA Franc Zone). We empirically explore different features of currency unions, and compare them to countries with sovereign monies by examining the criteria for MundellOs concept of an optimum currency area. We find that members of currency unions are more integrated than countries with their own currencies. For instance, we find that currency union members have more trade and less volatile real exchange rates than countries with their own monies; business cycles are more highly synchronized across currency union countries than across countries with sovereign monies.

Bitcoin - Asset or Currency? Revealing Users' Hidden Intentions

Abstract: Digital currencies are a globally spreading phenomenon that is frequently and also prominently addressed by media, venture capitalists, financial and governmental institutions alike. As exchange prices for Bitcoin have reached multiple peaks within 2013, we pose a prevailing and yet academically unaddressed question: What are users' intentions when changing their domestic into a digital currency? In particular, this paper aims at giving empirical insights on whether users’ interest regarding digital currencies is driven by its appeal as an asset or as a currency. Based on our evaluation, we find strong indications that especially uninformed users approaching digital currencies are not primarily interested in an alternative transaction system but seek to participate in an alternative investment vehicle.

Current Account Reversals and Currency Crises: Empirical Regularities

Abstract: This paper studies sharp reductions in current account deficits and large exchange rate depreciations in low- and middle-income countries. It examines which factors help predict the occurrence of a reversal or a currency crisis, and how these events affect macroeconomic performance. It finds that both domestic factors, such as the low reserves, and external factors, such as unfavorable terms of trade and high interest rates in industrial countries, trigger reversals and currency crises. The two types of events are, however, distinct; indeed, current account imbalances are not sharply reduced in the years following a currency crisis. Economic performance around these events is also quite different. An exchange rate crash is associated with a fall in output growth and a recovery thereafter, while for reversal events there is no systematic evidence of a growth slowdown.

Contagious Speculative Attacks

Abstract: During the European exchange market turmoil in 1992-93 it was evident that speculative attacks tended to spread across currencies Using a twocountry version of the model developed by Flood and Garber (1984) we show how a speculative attack against one currency may accelerate the warranted collapse of a second parity More importantly, even if the parity of the second currency is viable in the absence of a collapse of the first one, it might be subjected to a speculative attack if the reserves available to defend the parity are small