Do FX Interventions Lead to Higher FX Debt? Evidence from Firm-Level Data

Do FX Interventions Lead to Higher FX Debt? Evidence from Firm-Level Data
READ MORE...
Volume/Issue: Volume 2020 Issue 197
Publication date: September 2020
ISBN: 9781513557663
$18.00
Add to Cart by clicking price of the language and format you'd like to purchase
Available Languages and Formats
English
Prices in red indicate formats that are not yet available but are forthcoming.
Topics covered in this book

This title contains information about the following subjects. Click on a subject if you would like to see other titles with the same subjects.

Money and Monetary Policy , WP , firm , balance sheet data , FX intervention , corporate balance sheet vulnerabilities , financial development , FX debt , exchange rate depreciation , FXI x trade , issuance data , FXIS need , instrumented FXI , FXI intensity , Exchange rate arrangements , Exchange rates , Currencies , Exchange rate flexibility , Global , currency decision

Summary

Central banks often buy or sell reserves-–-so called FX interventions (FXIs)---to dampen sharp exchange rate movements caused by volatile capital flows. At the same time, these interventions may entail unintended side effects. In this paper, we investigate whether FXIs incentivize firms to take on more unhedged FX debt, thereby increasing medium-term corporate vulnerabilities. Using a novel dataset with close to 5,000 nonfinancial firms across 19 emerging markets covering 2002--2017, we find that the firm-level share of FX debt rises following intensive use of FXIs, particularly for non-exporting firms in shallow financial markets with no FX debt to begin with. The magnitude of this effect is economically significant, with one standard deviation increase in FXI leading to an average 2 percentage points increase in the FX debt share. For reference, the median share of FX debt in the sample is zero.