Dollarization Waves: New Evidence From a Comprehensive International Bond Database

Swapan-Kumar Pradhan, Eswar Prasad, Elod Takats and Judit Temesvary

No 34942, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We investigate how the U.S. dollar’s prominence in the denomination of international debt securities has evolved in recent decades, using a comprehensive global dataset with far more extensive coverage than datasets used in prior literature. We find no monotonic dollarization or de-dollarization trend; instead, the dollar’s share exhibits a wavelike pattern. We document three dollarization waves since the 1960s. The last wave, following the global financial crisis, lifted the dollar’s share nearly back to its level at the euro’s launch in 2000. We show that closer alignment of a country’s domestic currency to a reserve currency (e.g., the U.S. dollar) correlates with higher shares of issuance in that currency. Our findings are robust to composition and currency valuation effects as well as alternative data definitions.

JEL-codes: F3 F41 G15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ifn, nep-mon, nep-opm and nep-pay
Note: IFM
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