Reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?

Advocates of a more pluralistic international monetary and financial system seek to reduce reliance on a single national currency and to bring international liquidity under collective control. One recently revived proposal would transform US dollar official reserves into claims denominated in the IM...

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Päätekijät: McCauley, R, Schenk, C
Aineistotyyppi: Journal article
Julkaistu: Wiley 2015
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author McCauley, R
Schenk, C
author_facet McCauley, R
Schenk, C
author_sort McCauley, R
collection OXFORD
description Advocates of a more pluralistic international monetary and financial system seek to reduce reliance on a single national currency and to bring international liquidity under collective control. One recently revived proposal would transform US dollar official reserves into claims denominated in the IMF's key currency basket, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Drawing on new archival evidence and simulations, this article highlights issues that derailed earlier agreement on such an account and shortcomings of design and ambition revealed by subsequent developments. One design issue was account losses if US dollar yields failed to exceed SDR yields enough to offset dollar depreciation. In fact, uncovered interest parity did not hold and could well have left the account persistently insolvent. Another shortcoming was ambition: the proposed account proved simply too small to achieve the desired lowering of the dollar's share of foreign exchange reserves. Any new proposal needs to address these shortcomings.
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spelling oxford-uuid:84267c69-c52f-49c6-93a3-4c715f062ae62022-03-26T21:49:11ZReforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:84267c69-c52f-49c6-93a3-4c715f062ae6Symplectic Elements at OxfordWiley2015McCauley, RSchenk, CAdvocates of a more pluralistic international monetary and financial system seek to reduce reliance on a single national currency and to bring international liquidity under collective control. One recently revived proposal would transform US dollar official reserves into claims denominated in the IMF's key currency basket, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Drawing on new archival evidence and simulations, this article highlights issues that derailed earlier agreement on such an account and shortcomings of design and ambition revealed by subsequent developments. One design issue was account losses if US dollar yields failed to exceed SDR yields enough to offset dollar depreciation. In fact, uncovered interest parity did not hold and could well have left the account persistently insolvent. Another shortcoming was ambition: the proposed account proved simply too small to achieve the desired lowering of the dollar's share of foreign exchange reserves. Any new proposal needs to address these shortcomings.
spellingShingle McCauley, R
Schenk, C
Reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?
title Reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?
title_full Reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?
title_fullStr Reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?
title_full_unstemmed Reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?
title_short Reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s: Would a special drawing right substitution account have worked?
title_sort reforming the international monetary system in the 1970s and 2000s would a special drawing right substitution account have worked
work_keys_str_mv AT mccauleyr reformingtheinternationalmonetarysysteminthe1970sand2000swouldaspecialdrawingrightsubstitutionaccounthaveworked
AT schenkc reformingtheinternationalmonetarysysteminthe1970sand2000swouldaspecialdrawingrightsubstitutionaccounthaveworked