The role of the Japanese yen as an international currency is assessed. It is found that the determinants of international-currency use imply some increase for the yen’s use in international finance; however, the implications for the yen’s use in international trade are mixed. It is also shown that, despite Japan’s emergence as the world’s largest net creditor nation, Japan’s capital outflows have not significantly facilitated the yen’s internationalization. Data are presented showing that, although the yen’s use as an international currency has increased, it is still rather modest. Wider use of the yen as a regional currency in Asia has occurred, though a “yen-zone” does not appear to be emerging.

For about three decades until the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Covered Interest Parity (CIP) appeared to hold quite closely—even as a broad macroeconomic relationship applying to daily or weekly data. Not only have CIP deviations significantly increased since the GFC, but potential macrofinancial drivers of the variation in CIP deviations have also become significant. The variation in CIP deviations seems to be associated with multiple factors, not only regulatory changes. Most of these do not display a uniform importance across currency pairs and time, and some are associated with possible temporary considerations (such as asynchronous monetary policy cycles).

The yen is an important barometer for the Japanese economy. Depreciations are typically associated with favorable economic developments such as increased corporate profits, rising equity prices, and upward pressure on domestic consumer prices. On the other hand, large and sharp appreciations run the risk of lowering actual and expected inflation, squeezing corporate profits, generating a negative wealth effect through depressed equity prices, and reducing confidence in the Bank of Japan’s efforts to reflate the domestic economy and achieve the inflation target. This paper takes a closer look at underlying drivers of rapid yen appreciations, highlighting the key role of carry-trade and the zero lower bound as important amplifiers.

It is, as a critic of U.S.

Most trade is invoiced in very few currencies. Despite this, the Mundell-Fleming benchmark and its variants focus on pricing in the producer’s currency or in local currency. We model instead a ‘dominant currency paradigm’ for small open economies characterized by three features: pricing in a dominant currency; pricing complementarities, and imported input use in production. Under this paradigm: (a) the terms-of-trade is stable; (b) dominant currency exchange rate pass-through into export and import prices is high regardless of destination or origin of goods; (c) exchange rate pass-through of non-dominant currencies is small; (d) expenditure switching occurs mostly via imports, driven by the dollar exchange rate while exports respond weakly, if at all; (e) strengthening of the dominant currency relative to non-dominant ones can negatively impact global trade; (f) optimal monetary policy targets deviations from the law of one price arising from dominant currency fluctuations, in addition to the inflation and output gap. Using data from Colombia we document strong support for the dominant currency paradigm.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,3, California State University, Fullerton, course: International Economics, 8 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper will discuss the general relationship between the two major currencies of the world: the US-Dollar and the Euro and the determinants for the exchange rate fluctuations since the introduction of the Euro as the common currency of Europe during the period between January 1999 and November 2005. Since the introduction of the Euro as the common currency of the European Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999 this relationship was first characterized by a sharp depreciation of the Euro followed by a three year lasting appreciation of the same that passed over in a slight depreciation again from the beginning of 2005 in the long run.1 This paper will first focus on the History of the international currency exchange system from the 19th century until the end of the Bretton Woods System in 1973 and on the history of the currency system in the European community. It will then discuss the general determinants of exchange rates in the short and long run. It will be pointed out that in the short run interest rate differentials and expectations of international portfolio investors matter and in the long run the economic fundamentals such as inflation rates and GDP growth rates of either economic region are the main factors for the behaviour of the exchange rate. In this context the theories of the Law of one price and the purchasing power parity are introduced. In the third part of the paper the exchange rate theories introduced in the previous part are applied to the -$ exchange rate in the time period between 1999 and 2005. Thus, the short term and long term factors are used to explain the relationship between the two currencies in this period. Finally, the last part serves as a conclusion.