The euro as a reserve currency: a challenge to the pre-eminence of the US dollar?

Gabriele Galati and Philip Wooldridge

International Journal of Finance & Economics, 2009, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-23

Abstract: Well-developed financial markets are a necessary condition for a currency to play a role as a reserve currency. The introduction of the euro greatly improved the functioning of euro financial markets. This paper investigates whether euro financial markets have developed sufficiently to facilitate the emergence of the euro as a reserve currency on par with the US dollar. We find that the liquidity and breadth of euro financial markets are fast approaching those of dollar markets, and as a result the euro is eroding some of the advantages that have historically supported the pre-eminence of the US dollar as a reserve currency. This strengthens the incentive for monetary authorities to reconsider the currency composition of their reserves. Nevertheless, the introduction of the euro has not yet resulted in a significant change in the currency composition of official reserve holdings. The US dollar has maintained its place as the dominant reserve currency, supported perhaps by the edge that dollar financial markets still have over euro markets in terms of size, credit quality, and liquidity, as well as inertia in the use of international currencies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/ijfe.379 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: The euro as a reserve currency: a challenge to the pre-eminence of the US dollar? (2006)
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:ijf:ijfiec:v:14:y:2009:i:1:p:1-23

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://jws-edcv.wile ... PRINT_ISSN=1076-9307

DOI: 10.1002/ijfe.379

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Finance & Economics is currently edited by Mark P. Taylor, Keith Cuthbertson and Michael P. Dooley

More articles in International Journal of Finance & Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing () and Christopher F. Baum ().