1. If a country is a member of the International Monetary Fund and participates in the allocation of special drawing rights, its international reserves include not only gold and foreign exchange reserves, but also IMF reserve positions and special drawing rights, which not only expands the scale of its international reserves, but also increases its international liquidity; On the other hand, it can ease the demand for foreign exchange reserves, so that the holdings of foreign exchange reserves need not be too much.
2. If a country's currency is the main international reserve currency, it has an advantage in adjusting the imbalance of international payments and making international payments-it can repay foreign debts in local currency. Therefore, there is no need for reserve currency issuers to maintain excessive international reserves.
As for its strong economic strength, sustained balance of payments surplus and abundant reserve assets, it is another matter.
Second, the scale and stability of balance of payments flows.
1. A country's balance of payments has a decisive influence on its reserve demand, and it is also the most important factor to determine the appropriate scale of a country's international reserves. The first is the stability of its trade balance.
2. If the supply elasticity of export commodities and the demand elasticity of the sales market are both greater than 1, and the demand elasticity of imported commodities is less than 1, it means that its foreign trade balance is relatively stable; If its import and export are basically balanced or slightly exceeded, there is no need to consider international reserves; If the supply elasticity of export commodities is less than 1 and the demand elasticity of import commodities is greater than 1, it indicates that foreign trade conditions are poor and sufficient foreign exchange reserves need to be maintained.
3. Secondly, look at the status and stability of the balance of payments.
Generally speaking, if a country has a sustained balance of payments surplus (current account and capital account), the demand for international reserves is very small; On the other hand, if a country's balance of payments often appears deficit, the demand for international reserves is even greater; In the case of unstable balance of payments, the appropriate reserve level can be determined according to the frequency of deficit and other optional adjustment means.
5. In short, the causes, nature and degree of a country's international balance of payments imbalance, as well as the number, advantages and disadvantages of alternative adjustment measures, will determine the amount of international reserves needed in the adjustment process.
Third, the use and effectiveness of other balance of payments adjustment means. If a country implements strict foreign exchange control or trade control, it can effectively control the flow of imports and foreign exchange funds, and the demand for foreign exchange reserves is relatively small, but on the other hand, it also shows that its international reserve stock is insufficient.
Four, the size of a country's international financing ability is related to the international environment.
1. The external financing ability of a country (mainly developing countries) is mainly manifested in: the ability to obtain loans from foreign governments and international financial organizations; The ability to obtain foreign commercial loans; International bond markets's financing ability.
2. If a country has a high credit rating, can obtain loans from foreign governments and international financial institutions quickly and conveniently, and the sources of loans are stable and the conditions are good, or the country has strong financing ability in the international financial market, then the country does not need to hold too many international reserve assets; On the other hand, if a country's credit status is poor and its international financing ability is low, it should maintain sufficient international reserves.
Extended data
Determination method of appropriate international reserve scale
First, qualitative analysis methods
1. The basic idea of qualitative analysis is that the shortage or surplus of international reserves will directly affect some key economic variables and policy preferences. Therefore, by examining the changes of these economic variables and policy preferences, we can judge whether the reserve level is appropriate.
2. For example, the economic variables and policy tendencies that indicate a country's insufficient international reserves mainly include the following indicators: a sustained high interest rate policy; Foreign exchange control and foreign trade control; Strict demand management; Persistent exchange rate instability; Taking increasing reserves as the primary economic goal; The new reserves mainly come from credit arrangements.
3. The background of these objective indicators is that the government has made clear the level of its moderate reserves, so when it adopts the policy of high interest rate or incentive and income restriction to improve the balance of payments, it means that the national reserves are insufficient. It is precisely because of insufficient reserves that the government lacks the ability to intervene in the foreign exchange market, thus the exchange rate is unstable. Therefore, the country was forced to make up for the international reserve gap by borrowing from abroad.
4. There is no lack of rationality in qualitative analysis, but it can only roughly reflect the appropriateness of reserves and cannot calculate a certain reserve. Moreover, the changes in economic variables and policy measures used to reflect the appropriateness of reserves are not necessarily caused by excess or shortage of reserves, but by other economic factors and even political factors.
5. Because the premise of this method is that the reserve level is an important policy goal, the government adjusts its internal and external policies to achieve the predetermined reserve level goal, but sometimes the government's policy adjustment may be for other more important policy goals.
Second, quantitative analysis methods
Quantitative analysis mainly includes proportional analysis and cost-benefit analysis.
(1) proportional analysis method.
1, that is, the proportional relationship between international reserves and some economic activity variables, is used to measure the optimal level of reserve demand. Among them, the import ratio method (R/M ratio method) is a simple and easy measurement method widely used in the world at present.
This is written by Robert, an economist of Yale University in the United States. Professor triffin put forward in the book gold and the dollar Crisis published by 1960. The basic idea is: take the import in international trade as the only variable, and use the ratio of international reserve to import (R/M) to measure the optimal reserve.
3. The maximum R/M ratio of a country should be 40% and the minimum R/M ratio should be 20%. According to the annual ratio of reserves to imports, it is about 25-30%, that is, a country's reserves should meet the import for about 3-4 months.
4. In addition, the commonly used proportion indicators in proportion analysis include: the proportion of reserves to total foreign debt and the proportion of reserves to gross national product. This method is adopted by many countries because of its simplicity, and the IMF is also a supporter of this method.
5. However, the proportional method also has obvious shortcomings: First, a certain proportional relationship can only reflect the influence of a single economic variable on reserve demand, but can not fully reflect the influence of various economic variables. Secondly, for the R/M ratio method, firstly, it has theoretical defects, that is, the role of international reserves is not only to pay for imports.
6. Second, the situation varies from country to country. For example, countries have different views on the benefits and costs of holding international reserves and have different positions in the world economy. These differences determine the differences of reserve policies in different countries, so the demand for reserves in different countries is also different. Therefore, it seems not enough to use the single index of import trade as the basis for determining the international reserve demand of countries.
(2) Cost-benefit analysis method. Also known as opportunity cost analysis.
1, this is from the 1960s, economists led by Heller and Agawal applied the enterprise theory of microeconomics-marginal cost equals marginal income-to the total management of foreign exchange reserves, that is, when marginal cost equals marginal income, the reserves held are moderate.
2. Generally speaking, the demand for international reserves is inversely proportional to the opportunity cost of holding reserves and directly proportional to the marginal income of holding reserves. The opportunity cost of holding reserves is the marginal output of using foreign exchange to import resource elements to promote domestic economic growth (which can be calculated by domestic investment rate of return).
3. Marginal profit from holding reserves refers to the profit from using reserves to make up the balance of payments deficit, avoiding or delaying the adoption of policy adjustment measures, reducing and alleviating the adverse impact on the economy, and purchasing foreign interest-bearing assets with foreign exchange. Only when the marginal income of holding reserves is equal to the opportunity cost of holding reserves, so as to maximize social welfare, is the most suitable reserve scale.
4. The advantage of cost-benefit analysis method is that the calculation accuracy is higher than that of proportional analysis method. This method uses multiple regression and correlation analysis techniques to establish the reserve demand function, which overcomes the one-sidedness of using single variable in proportional analysis.
5. Some variables in macroeconomics do not have clearly defined costs and benefits like microeconomic variables, but can only measure comprehensive costs and comprehensive benefits.
6. This makes the cost-benefit method have some shortcomings: its calculation method is complex, involving many economic variables, and some data are difficult to obtain, so it can only be selected subjectively by experience or replaced by other approximate indicators, which affects the accuracy of the calculation results, so it is difficult to adopt it in real life.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Moderate International Reserve Scale