Accounting for Reserves

Tamim Bayoumi and Christian Saborowski

No 2012/302, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Views on the effectiveness of sterilized reserve intervention vary. Sterilized intervention is generally seen as ineffective in advanced countries while persistent intervention by some emerging markets is often cited as contributing to undervalued exchange rates and current account surpluses. This paper argues that capital controls reconcile these views. We find strong and highly robust evidence that sterilized intervention is fully offset by outflows of private money in countries without controls, while controls partially block this offset. For a country with extensive capital controls, every dollar in additional reserves increases the current account by some 50 cents. This is mainly offset by an opposite adjustment in the current account of the United States—the dominant reserve currency issuer with the deepest and most liquid bond markets—with a smaller diversion to other emerging markets.

Keywords: WP; percent GDP; percent; Reserve accumulation; intervention; global imbalances; reserve currency; deviation from US; percent deviation; percent change; explanatory variable; Current account; Reserves accumulation; Capital account; International reserves; Capital controls; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2012-12-21
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40189 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Accounting for reserves (2014)
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:imf:imfwpa:2012/302

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().