Why Do Countries Peg the Way They Peg? The Determinants of Anchor Currency Choice

Conditional on choosing a pegged exchange rate regime, what determines the currency to which countries peg or “anchor” their exchange rate? This paper aims to answer this question using a panel multinomial logit framework, covering more than 100 countries for the period 1980-1998. We find that trade network externalities are a key determinant of anchor currency choice, implying that there are multiple steady states for the distribution of anchor currencies in the international monetary system. Other factors found to be related to anchor currency choice include the symmetry of output co-movement, the currency denomination of debt, and legal or colonial origins.

Why Do Countries Peg the Way They Peg? The Determinants of Anchor Currency Choice

Conditional on choosing a pegged exchange rate regime, what determines the currency to which countries peg or “anchor” their exchange rate? This paper aims to answer this question using a panel multinomial logit framework, covering more than 100 countries for the period 1980-1998. We find that trade network externalities are a key determinant of anchor currency choice, implying that there are multiple steady states for the distribution of anchor currencies in the international monetary system. Other factors found to be related to anchor currency choice include the symmetry of output co-movement, the currency denomination of debt, and legal or colonial origins

Local Trade Networks and Spatially Persistent Unemployment

This paper studies the effect of local trade networks on the spatial distribution of employment in a Cooper and John (1988) type model with effective demand externalities. It is shown that, if labor can be hired in continuous quantities, then the long run spatial distribution of employment is uniform, and independent of any trade network topology. When labor has binary support, however, local trade networks are shown to generate spatial unemployment clusters which can persist indefinitely.trade networks unemployment local interactions cellular automata

Local Interactions and Global Persistence

This paper studies the effects of local interactions on the distribution of employment in a Keynesian-type model with strategic complementarities. It is shown that rational expectations generate symmetric equilibria for any interaction structure except autarky. Under adaptive expectations, the distribution of employment converges to a rational expectations equilibrium, implying that asymmetric equilibria, or inequality, cannot persist in the long run. On the basis of both analytical and computational results, however, it is shown that symmetric equilibria are unstable in the sense that, in the presence of noise, local interactions can produce globally persistent inequality.game-theory evolution persistence inequality local interactions unemployment Keynes externalities

Network Externalities and Dollarization Hysteresis

Dollarization in Russia increased rapidly during the early 1990s, but failed to come down in the second half of the 1990s in spite of exchange rate stabilization. To explain this "dollarization hysteresis," this paper develops a model in which network externalities in the demand for currency can generate multiple stable steady states for the dollarization ratio. The model is estimated using a new source of data on dollar currency holdings in Russia. On the basis of these estimates, which confirm the existence of network externalities, the paper discusses several policies that could result in a permanent decrease in dollarization.Dollarization;Currency substitution;Economic models;probability, equation, heteroscedasticity, exchange rate depreciation, standard errors, survey, empirical estimation, autocorrelation, independent variable, correlation, functional form, statistic, estimation procedure, binary choice, capital flight, goodness of fit, law of large numbers, time series, nonlinear relationship, econometrics, financial statistics, statistical significance, binary choice model, number of variables, functional forms, currency depreciation, statistics, covariance