US Dollar Dominance in Trade Invoicing and Cross-Border Investments in SEACEN Economies

The SEACEN Centre and Hiro Ito

in Research Studies from South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre

Abstract: This collaborative research study focuses on the causes and challenges of the wide use of the U.S. dollar in trade invoicing and cross-border investments. It finds that the U.S. dollar maintains its structural dominance in the international monetary system due to deep liquidity and powerful network effects, providing global stability while imposing high costs—such as the original sin borrowing—on emerging economies. The study highlights that although inertia in trade invoicing and global value chain integration support the prevailing use of the U.S. dollar in the region, policy considerations may include lowering transaction costs and strengthening the institutional foundations for reducing the excessive U.S. dollar dependence. This research publication covers the following seven SEACEN economies: Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, and the Philippines (in the order of appearance).

Date: 2026
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.seacen.org/publication-doc/RP1-USD-Dominance-COMPILED-28Apr26.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:sea:rstudy:rp113

Access Statistics for this book

More books in Research Studies from South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Azharin ().