Dollar Dominance in FX Trading

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.07656

Over 85% of all foreign exchange (FX) transactions involve the U.S. dollar, whereas the United States accounts for a much smaller fraction of global economic activity. My paper attributes the dominance of the dollar in FX trading to strategic avoidance of price impact. Using a novel identification strategy, I show that, on average, 13% of the volume in dollar pairs arises from using the dollar as a vehicle currency to indirectly exchange two nondollar currencies. To rationalise this result, I derive three model-based conditions for dollar dominance. I empirically test these conditions and provide evidence consistent with the theoretical framework.

This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance.

Funding: F. Somogyi acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [Grant 195095].

Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.07656.

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