Truly honored to present my NBER working paper on the central-bank reserve balance-sheet channel in which large reserve stocks can deter speculative pressure by signaling credible dollar-liquidity capacity, collateral value, and future intervention capacity, even without contemporaneous reserve sales during a research webinar at the Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Saturday 5 September 2026. I am extremely grateful to Mushtariy Boymatova for the invitation. Stay tuned for more information.
US Monetary Spillovers, Foreign Exchange, and Gold Reserves at Times of Geopolitical Fragmentation
This paper studies whether countries with larger foreign exchange and gold reserve buffers exhibit smaller exchange-rate responses to US monetary policy surprises. We test a central-bank reserve balance-sheet channel in which large reserve stocks can deter speculative pressure by signaling credible dollar-liquidity capacity, collateral value, and future intervention capacity, even without contemporaneous reserve sales. For identification, we use high-frequency FOMC monetary surprises, minute-level exchange rates, and predetermined reserve holdings for 18 countries. Countries with larger dollar reserves exhibit smaller exchange-rate depreciations after US monetary tightening, while non-dollar reserves do not display the same pattern. Gold reserves are also associated with smaller depreciations. These buffer effects are concentrated in countries without swap and repo lines and are strongest where dollar exposure, especially external dollar liabilities, is larger. The results show that reserve composition and access to dollar liquidity facilities, not only aggregate reserve size, are empirically relevant for exchange-rate resilience.
My research has been presented in several central bank settings over the recent period, reflecting sustained engagement with policy-relevant empirical work: at the Bank of Thailand (1) in May 2024 (during the ABD-PIER conference), the Bank of France (2) in October 2024 (during a visiting scholar appointment), the European Central Bank (3) in November 2024 (ECB research seminar of the Euro Area External Sector and Euro Adoption Division in the Directorate General Economics), the Bank of Finland (4) in April 2025 (BOFIT research seminar during a visiting scholar appointment), the Bank of Korea (5) in August 2025 (during the ABD-JIMF-BOK conference and a research seminar), the Bank of Israel (6) in September 2025 (during the VIMM webinar), the Bank of Latvia (7) in October 2025 (research seminar), the National Bank of Slovakia (8) in January 2026 (research seminar), the Bank of England (9) in January 2026 (research seminar), the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (10) in February 2026 (research webinar), the Central Bank of Suriname (11) in February 2026 (research “hands-on” webinar), the Bank Al-Maghrib (12) in March 2026 (research webinar), and the South African Central Bank (13) in April 2026 (research webinar).