 When did the dollar overtake sterling as the leading international currency? Evidence from the bond markets (revised)Liva Chitu, Barry Eichengreen and Arnaud Mehl Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley Abstract: This paper offers new evidence on the emergence of the dollar as the leading international currency, focusing on its role as currency of denomination in global bond markets. We show that the dollar overtook sterling much earlier than commonly supposed, as early as in 1929. Financial market development appears to have been the main factor helping the dollar to surmount sterling’s head start. The finding that a shift from a unipolar to a multipolar international monetary and financial system has happened before suggests that it can happen again. That the shift occurred earlier than commonly believed suggests that the advantages of incumbency are not all they are cracked up to be. And that financial deepening was a key determinant of the dollar’s emergence points to the challenges facing currencies aspiring to international status. Keywords: Social and Behavioral Sciences; Business; foreign public debt; international monetary system; international currencies; role of the US dollar; network externalities; path dependency (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt3v03b36h Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.