Working Paper

Currency blocs in the 21st century

Abstract: Based on a classification of countries and territories according to their regime and anchor currency choice, the study considers the two major currency blocs of the present world. A nested logit regression suggests that long-term structural economic variables determine a given country's currency bloc affiliation. The dollar bloc differs from the euro bloc in that there exists a group of countries that peg temporarily to the U.S. dollar without having close economic affinities with the bloc. The estimated parameters are consistent with an additive random utility model interpretation. A currency bloc equilibrium in the spirit of Alesina and Barro (2002) is derived empirically.

Keywords: Foreign exchange; International finance;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Part of Series: Globalization Institute Working Papers

Publication Date: 2011

Number: 87