Description
We reappraise the cross-country evidence on the dollarization of domestic financial systems in emerging market economies. Amidst some striking heterogeneity of patterns across emerging regions, we identify a broad global trend towards financial sector de-dollarization from the early 2000s to the eve of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Since then, de-dollarization has either broadly stalled or even been reversed in many economies, but a few have continued to de-dollarize through this date, suggesting that the inter-play of global and domestic factors is key. To gain further insight into such inter-play, we examine the experience of Peru since the early1990s and find that a number of global factors including low global interest rates, low global risk-aversion, and high commodity prices have aided financial de-dollarization. Domestic factors that raise the relative cost of dollar lending, such as the introduction of macro-prudential measures, also aid financial de-dollarization. The introduction and adherence to inflation targeting seem, however, to be key.