Sterling's Past, Dollar's Future: Historical Perspectives on Reserve Currency Competition

Barry Eichengreen

No 11336, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper provides an historical perspective on reserve currency competition and on the prospects of the dollar as an international currency. It questions the conventional wisdom that competition for reserve-currency status is a winner-take-all game, showing that several currencies have often shared this role in the past and arguing that innovations in financial markets make it even more likely that they will do so in the future. It suggests that the dollar and the euro are likely to share this position for the foreseeable future. Hopes that the yuan could become a major international currency 20 or even 40 years from now are highly premature.

JEL-codes: F0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-mon
Note: DAE IFM
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (61)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11336.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11336

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11336

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().