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Mars or Mercury? The Geopolitics of International Currency Choice | NBER

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Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

Working Paper 24145 DOI 10.3386/w24145 Issue Date December 2017 We assess the role of economic and security considerations in the currency composition of international reserves. We contrast the “Mercury hypothesis” that currency choice is governed by pecuniary factors familiar to the literature, such as economic size and credibility of major reserve currency issuers, against the “Mars hypothesis” that this depends on geopolitical factors. Using data on foreign reserves of 19 countries before World War I, for which the currency composition of reserves is known and security alliances…

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