Currency Networks, Bilateral Exchange Rate Volatility and the Role of the US Dollar

Michael Bleaney and Mo Tian

Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, School of Economics

Abstract: We investigate monthly bilateral exchange rate volatility for a large sample of currency pairs over the period 1999-2006. Pegs (particularly to the US dollar) and managed floats tend to have lower volatility than independent floats. A deeper investigation shows that the peg effect operates almost entirely through currency networks (i.e. where two currencies are pegged to the same anchor currency), and the lower volatility of US dollar pegs reflects the size of the US dollar network. Managed floats show clear evidence of tracking the US dollar, further increasing the effective size of the US dollar network. Inflation undermines the currency-stabilizing effect of peg networks. Currencies in smaller peg networks have higher unweighted but not trade-weighted exchange rate volatility, which is consistent with anchors being chosen to minimize trade-weighted volatility. The size of the effective US dollar network revealed here is a plausible explanation of the rarity of basket pegs. Volatility also reflects a range of structural factors such as country size, level of development, population density, inflation differentials and business cycle asymmetry.

Keywords: exchange rate volatility; currency peg; inflation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/economics/documents/discussion-papers/11-06.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Currency Networks, Bilateral Exchange Rate Volatility and the Role of the US Dollar (2012)
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:not:notecp:11/06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, School of Economics School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().