Clamoring for greenbacks: Explaining the resurgence of the U.S. dollar in international debt

Abstract

This paper characterizes trends of the shares of the U.S. dollar, the euro, and total foreign currencies in international debt denomination over the last two decades. We find that countries with a high output growth trend, greater financial development, better fiscal conditions, and more investment opportunities tend to decrease the extent of their reliance on the dollar, but increase that on the euro, while their dependency on total foreign currencies remains unaffected. Stronger trade ties with the United States (the euro area) contribute to a higher dollar (euro) share in the currency denomination of international debt securities. We also find that absent from the global financial crisis (GFC), the dollar (euro) share in debt denomination would have been higher (lower) than the observed shares in the postcrisis period. That suggests that the outbreak of the GFC increased the demand for the dollar as a safe haven.