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Estimating the Currency Composition of Foreign Exchange Reserves

Matthew Ferranti

arXiv 28 Jun 2022 · Finance — Statistical Finance · 3 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2206.13751 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Central banks manage about $12 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, influencing global exchange rates and asset prices. However, some of the largest holders of reserves report minimal information about their currency composition, hindering empirical analysis. I describe a Hidden Markov Model to estimate the composition of a central bank's reserves by relating the fluctuation in the portfolio's valuation to the exchange rates of major reserve currencies. I apply the model to China and Singapore, two countries that collectively hold about $3.4 trillion in reserves and conceal their composition. I find that both China's reserve composition likely resembles the global average, while Singapore probably holds fewer US dollars.

Citation extraction

32
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appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 90% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Sheng, Liugang (2013) Did China Diversify Its Foreign Reserves?1.00053100%
2Shi, Kai, Nie, Li (2017) Did China Effectively Manage Its Foreign Exchange Reserves? Revisiting the Currency Composition Change0.81142100%
3Prasad, Eswar (2019) Has the dollar lost ground as the dominant international currency?0.73732100%
4Ito, Hiro, McCauley, Robert (2020) Currency composition of foreign exchange reserves0.64422100%
5Eichengreen, Barry, Mathieson, Donald (2000) The Currency Composition of Foreign Exchange Reserves: Retrospect and Prospect0.64422100%
6Gopinath, Gita, Stein, Jeremy (2018) Trade Invoicing, Bank Funding, and Central Bank Reserve Holdings0.40511100%
7DellaVigna, Stefano, Ferrara, Eliana La (2010) Detecting Illegal Arms Trade0.40511100%
8Orlik, Tom, Glasser, Jeanne (2012) Understanding China's economic indicators: translating the data into investment opportunities0.40511100%
9Chopin, Nicolas, Papaspiliopoulos, Omiros (2020) An Introduction to Sequential Monte Carlo0.40511100%
10Zheng, Tingguo, Chen, Rong (2017) Dirichlet ARMA Models for Compositional Time Series0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 32 scored citations.