De Jure versus De Facto Exchange Rate Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa

Slavi Slavov ()

Journal of African Economies, 2013, vol. 22, issue 5, 732-756

Abstract: There are 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with floating exchange rate regimes, de jure. Statistical analysis on monthly data for the past decade reveals that in most cases these exchange rate regimes can be approximated surprisingly well by a soft peg to a basket dominated by the US dollar. The weight on the dollar appears to have fallen somewhat across the continent in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Replicating the model with weekly data suggests that the focus on the dollar might be even more pronounced at higher data frequencies. While there might be strong arguments in favour of limiting exchange rate volatility in SSA countries, soft-pegging to the dollar does not appear to be the best fit for them, given the currency structure of their external trade and finance. Copyright 2013 , Oxford University Press.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejt005 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: De Jure Versus De Facto Exchange Rate Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011)
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:oup:jafrec:v:22:y:2013:i:5:p:732-756

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Economies is currently edited by Francis Teal

More articles in Journal of African Economies from Centre for the Study of African Economies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().