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This study provides daily conditional value-at-risk (C-VaR) forecasts for a foreign currency portfolio comprising the USD/EUR, USD/JPY, and USD/BRL currencies. To do so, we estimate multivariate stochastic volatility models with time-varying conditional correlations using a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Then, given the model-specific currency return density forecasts, we make the optimal portfolio choice by minimizing the C-VaR through numerical optimization. According to out-of-sample experiment, including emerging markets into the currency basket is essential for downside risk management, and considering model uncertainty as well as the parameter uncertainty can improve the portfolio performance.

Following the occupation of Eritrea in 1941, British authorities in London promoted a currency policy aimed at replacing the Italian lira with a sterling-based currency basket. In May 1942, they opted for the enforcement of the East African shilling as the new legal tender. The lire, however, did not disappear overnight. Their circulation was tolerated—and, in some cases, even encouraged—by British authorities in Asmara, which exploited the small deal of autonomy they enjoyed from London to adapt the new monetary system to the needs of local governance. The case study is a useful lens to analyse the multiplicity of interests that shaped the political economy of currency of the United Kingdom in the former Italian colonial space. Currency and exchange rate regimes were technologies of rule that served different purposes, from cost maximisation to the management of the relationship with different categories of subjects. The trajectory of the lire also confirms that the introduction of colonial currencies in Africa did not bring to a sudden revolution of pre-existing monetary practices. The actual implementation of the new monetary legislation was the outcome of a subtle process of negotiation involving state and non-state actors in Europe and Africa as well.

With the RMB becoming the fifth international payment currency and its inclusion in the SDR currency basket, coupled with the opening of China’s capital market, RMB-related exchange rates have attr...

The global financial crisis in 2007 not only had a serious impact on the global financial system, but also led to a more sceptical view of US Dollar's role as the key currency. This opportunity led to the Chinese government actively promoting the internationalization of the Chinese Yuan. The People’s Bank of China has set three goals for the internationalization of the Yuan. The three goals are payment currency for international trade, investment currency and reserve currency. Chinese government set up a Yuan offshore settlement center not only in Hong Kong but also in London, Singapore, Seoul, France, Germany, Taiwan and New York. The Yuan became the world’s fifth-largest payment currency, surpassing the Canadian Dollar and the Australian Dollar in November 2014. The RMB also officially joined the SDR on 1 October, 2016. At present, the SDR currency basket consists of the US Dollar (41.73%), the euro (30.93%), the Chinese Yuan (10.92%), the Japanese Yen (8.33%), and the British Pound (8.09%). The percentage for the Yuan is ranked third after the US Dollar and euro. The internationalization of the Chinese Yuan has advanced rapidly since 2010, but this does not necessarily mean that the Chinese Yuan has reached the same level as the US Dollar or the euro, British Pound, or Japanese Yen. China is the second-largest economy in the world and is only beginning to recognize the need for the internationalization of the Yuan. This study aims to identify the properties and suitability of the RMB as an international currency. GDP, interest rate, and exchange rate were selected as the indicators of real and financial sectors. The empirical results revealed that the RMB manifested badly in the GDP and exchange rate sectors, but that the Chinese interest rate appeared synchronized with the United States' interest rate. Moreover, when the Chinese GDP growth rate is positive or the world economic growth rate is negative, their differences will converge. Similarly, when the Dollar depreciates or the Chinese Yuan appreciates, their differences will converge. There are no significant restrictions keeping the RMB from being incorporated as an international currency. However, the RMB is not yet fully convertible, and the exchange rate is still unstable. Moreover, the Chinese capital market is not yet fully open, and reform of the financial system must be urgently pursued.

Regression models of a dependent variable that take on qualitative values 0 and 1 cannot be interpreted as conventional regression models. The fact that the dependent variable takes on two different values causes some problems in the model. These problems include the fact that the model’s errors do not show normal distribution, that the model’s errors take on values less than 0 or greater than 1, and that the relationship between dependent and independent variables is not linear. Nonlinear models should be utilized to solve these problems. Nonlinear models include logit and probit models. Therefore, logit and probit models are discussed in detail in this chapter of the book. Macroeconomic factors affecting the return on the BIST-100 Index (Gold price per ounce, TL Deposit Interest, Euro-Dollar Currency Basket Return) have been investigated using logit and probit models. The findings of the study indicate that the return on the BIST-100 Index is affected by Euro-Dollar Currency Basket Return.

On October 1, 2016, with the approval of the International Monetary Fund, the RMB officially joined the SDR currency basket, which not only recognized the international status of RMB, but also injected new vitality into the development of the world economy. SDR interest rate is an important part of SDR valuation and pricing. Based on the background of RMB entering the SDR currency basket, this paper divides the study period into three parts to analyse the impact of RMB enter the basket on the SDR interest rate: a complete review period before the RMB included; the IMF announced that it will accept the RMB but not yet; and the RMB is officially “add to the basket”. The results of the study show that RMB’s participation in the SDR basket significantly improves the SDR interest rate level, helps to improve the stability of the SDR interest rate and the representation of the SDR interest rate to the global economy, and is expected to help build a new order in the international monetary system.

The Frankel-Wei regression framework measures the comovements between currencies, and assumes that all foreign exchange rates share a common numeraire. The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Special Drawing Right (SDR) is a regular choice for the common numeraire. However, the five-currency basket of the SDR lacks diversification, which results in significant positive comovements between the basket currencies and the SDR currency basket. Consequently, the estimator of the regression coefficient is biased away from its true value. We suggest that the common numeraire be a large well-diversified currency basket, rather than a small undiversified currency basket, such as the five-currency SDR.

We study the renminbi (RMB) central parity formation mechanism following the August 2015 reform using statistical models. We identify the roles of the onshore and offshore RMB exchange rates and the US dollar index in determining the central parity in a linear regression framework. The effect of the RMB currency basket index, however, is revealed after controlling for multiplicative offshore RMB volatility effects. The offshore RMB volatility exerts a dampening effect on the links between the central parity and its determinants. In the prediction comparison exercise, the three selected models statistically outperform the random walk benchmark. Among these four models, the selected multiplicative specification yields the smallest root-mean squared prediction error and mean absolute prediction error.

On August 11, 2015, China revamped its procedure for setting the official central parity of the renminbi (RMB) against the US dollar. Our empirical investigation suggests that the intertemporal dynamics of China’s central parity shifted after this policy change, though the deviation of the RMB offshore rate from the central parity and the US dollar index remained the two significant determi-nants of central parity after the policy change. In contrast, the VIX index only offered explanatory power up to August 2015. Thereafter, the onshore RMB rate and the difference between the one-month offshore and onshore RMB forward points have significant impacts on the central parity. While the US dollar index effect remains, we find no evidence of a rate-fixing role for the RMB exchange rate against the currency basket announced by China in December 2015.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the Spanish business sector’s economic exposure to currency risk in Latin America between 2010 and 2016, testing the effectiveness of hedging with derivatives for the reduction of this risk.,Economic exposure is tested with the Jorion model (1990) using both a currency basket and an individualised analysis for the main currencies sustaining business activities between Spain and Latin America: the Mexican peso, Brazilian real, Argentine peso, Chilean peso, and Colombian peso. For the hedging analysis, dynamic panel data models were estimated using a generalised method of moments.,The results reveal that the number of firms with significant economic exposure is sensitive to the temporal frequency of the observations. The evidence denotes that the firms’ export profile is predominant, both when considering a basket of Latin American currencies and when individually considering the five main pairs of currencies. The only exception is the Argentine peso, where firms’ import profile is slightly higher. The Chilean peso stands out as the currency with the greatest number of firms with significant exposure.,This work provides unpublished evidence on economic exposure to currency risk in Latin America in a recent period characterised by two main aspects: an important devaluation of some Latin American currencies with respect to the euro; and an enhancement of Spanish business activities in the region to favour growth during the recent recession of the Spanish economy.,este trabajo analiza la exposicion economica al riesgo cambiario en Latinoamerica por parte del sector empresarial espanol entre 2010 y 2016. Asimismo, evalua la efectividad de la cobertura con productos derivados en su reduccion.,la exposicion economica es estimada a traves del modelo de Jorion (1990), utilizando tanto una cesta de divisas como un analisis individualizado para las principales divisas que sustentan la actividad entre Espana y Latinoamerica, a saber, Peso mexicano, Real brasileno, Peso argentino, Peso chileno, y Peso colombiano. Respecto al analisis de la cobertura, se estiman modelos dinamicos con datos de panel a traves del metodo generalizado de momentos.,los resultados muestran que el numero de empresas con exposicion economica significativa es sensible a la frecuencia temporal de las observaciones. Asimismo, la evidencia denota que el perfil exportador de las empresas es mayoritario, tanto al considerar una cesta de divisas latinoamericanas como, individualmente, los cinco principales pares de divisas. La unica excepcion es el peso argentino, donde el perfil importador de las empresas es levemente superior. Asimismo, el peso chileno destaca como la divisa con mayor numero de empresas con exposicion significativa.,este trabajo aporta evidencia inedita sobre la exposicion economica al riesgo cambiario en Latinoamerica en un periodo reciente caracterizado por dos aspectos principales: i) una importante depreciacion de algunas divisas latinoamericanas respecto al euro; ii) una potenciacion de la actividad empresarial espanola en esa region para favorecer su crecimiento durante la reciente recesion de la economia espanola.

The main challenge of China’s current exchange rate regime is that with large and frequent interventions, the RMB exchange rate cannot adequately respond to the changes in economic fundamentals. Th...

Due not only to a dominant role of the US dollar in regional trade and financial transactions but also to de facto US dollar pegged exchange rate policy, Asian countries cannot avoid exchange rate ...

We study how the financial conditions in the Center Economies [the U.S., Japan, and the Euro area] impact other countries over the period 1986 through 2015. Our methodology relies upon a two-step approach. We focus on five possible linkages between the center economies (CEs) and the non-Center economics, or peripheral economies (PHs), and investigate the strength of these linkages. For each of the five linkages, we first regress a financial variable of the PHs on financial variables of the CEs while controlling for global factors. Next, we examine the determinants of sensitivity to the CEs as a function of country-specific macroeconomic conditions and policies, including the exchange rate regime, currency weights, monetary, trade and financial linkages with the CEs, the levels of institutional development, and international reserves. Extending our previous work (Aizenman et al., 2016), we devote special attention to the impact of currency weights in the implicit currency basket, balance sheet exposure, and currency composition of external debt. We find that for both policy interest rates and the real exchange rate (REER), the link with the CEs has been pervasive for developing and emerging market economies in the last two decades, although the movements of policy interest rates are found to be more sensitive to global financial shocks around the time of the emerging markets’ crises in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and since 2008. When we estimate the determinants of the extent of connectivity, we find evidence that the weights of major currencies, external debt, and currency compositions of debt are significant factors. More specifically, having a higher weight on the dollar (or the euro) makes the response of a financial variable such as the REER and exchange market pressure in the PHs more sensitive to a change in key variables in the U.S. (or the euro area) such as policy interest rates and the REER. While having more exposure to external debt would have similar impacts on the financial linkages between the CEs and the PHs, the currency composition of international debt securities does matter. Economies more reliant on dollar-denominated debt issuance tend to be more vulnerable to shocks emanating from the U.S.

The Pacific island countries have opted for exchange rate regimes with varying degrees of flexibility. Whereas several microstates have adopted an external currency as their legal tender, others have decided to use a basket currency, and yet others have chosen a managed float. The choice of exchange rate regime can have far reaching economic consequences. In the paper, we study the basket currency arrangements by Fiji, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and Tonga. We first build a new four-country exchange rate model that illustrates how monetary authorities should best determine the weights of the basket currencies given certain macroeconomic objective functions. In this model, we explicitly include tourism flows. In the second part of the paper, we estimate the de facto weights of foreign currencies in the currency basket of the four countries. We show how the composition has changed amid the global financial crisis. Finally, we demonstrate that the current weights are not optimal compared with the predictions of our model.

Характеризуется позиция относительно того, что евро, будучи единой европейской валютой, имеет абсолютно все предпосылки для того, чтобы в итоге стать одной из ведущих мировых валют. Проанализирован статус указанной наднациональной валюты в ключевых областях мировой валютной системы. При этом обосновано, что характерным для международного положения евро является его довольно ярко выраженный региональный характер. В то же время, отдельно учтен фактор интернационализации китайского юаня и создания азиатского (регионального) валютного блока как третьего базового элемента современной мировой валютной системы. Также рассмотрено использование евро в России в качестве резервной и инвестиционной валюты.

The multi-currency basket is an exchange rate regime in which the currency is pegged to several foreign currencies. The basket is defined by its composing foreign currencies, and by the weighting of each currency in the basket. The exchange rate in such a regime is pegged to a weighted basket of currencies.We propose to present the benefits and the drawbacks of such an exchange rate regime from a macroeconomic and financial point of view. We also formulate mathematically a general theory of Foreign Exchange in the case of a currency under the regime of a multi-currency basket. The creation ex nihilo of a general model for a multi-currency basket results in equations applicable in all cases. The article covers theoretical and practical aspects of this exchange rate regime, responding to the most concrete issues faced by financial markets’ professionals, and should also interest academics, teachers and students.

Before 2005 July 21st, RMB exchange rate was pegged to US Dollar and adopted a fixed exchange rate. The correlation between RMB exchange rate and exchange rates of other East Asian economies was not significant. Empirical findings indicated that since Mainland China changed its exchange rate regime to a basket of currencies on July 22nd, 2005, in addition to the insignificant correlation between RMB exchange rate and exchange rates of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia duration the certain period, the correlation between exchange rate fluctuations of RMB and other East Asian economies is significantly related. This shows that the exchange rate regime of East Asian economies is mostly pegged to a basket of currencies. In order to avoid effects of exchange rate fluctuations from other countries on trade interests, exchange rate fluctuations of East Asian economies have a clear regional linkage. However, Mainland China’s exchange rate policy is gradually becoming more open, causing RMB exchange rate fluctuations to become an important reference for overall exchange rate structure in East Asia. RMB internationalization will continue in the future, cross-border trade with RMB settlement increasing, and RMB offshore market size will also expand. And currently Mainland China is leading East Asian economic and trade integration; hence RMB exchange rate fluctuations will have a significant impact on exchange rate fluctuations of other East Asian economies in the foreseeable future.

Persistent renminbi (RMB) devaluation expectations are one of the greatest threats to China's macroeconomic stability. Market interventions backed by huge foreign exchange reserves and capital controls are not sufficient to eliminate the expectations of devaluation. Creating a market-based and flexible RMB exchange rate regime holds the key to the elimination of devaluation expectations. The present paper compares the pros and cons of several policy options, and proposes to introduce, as a transition to free floating, a new exchange rate regime pegged to a currency basket with a wide band. The new regime should be able to give the RMB exchange rate enough flexibility to eliminate devaluation expectations as well as prevent excessive overshooting. To ensure a smooth transition, the new regime needs to be supported by controlling cross-border capital flows.

The paper estimates the equilibrium real exchange rate for Botswana. It also reviews the country’s exchange rate regimes. Botswana operated a fixed exchange – without adjustable pegs from 1966 to 1976; with adjustable pegs from 1976 to 1980; and with a currency basket from 1980 to date. Using the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing procedure, the paper found terms of trade and trade openness to determine the equilibrium real exchange rate. The actual real exchange rate has deviated significantly from the equilibrium exchange rate. The estimated speed of adjustment is very slow, which calls for policies that could raise it in order to avoid excess misalignments.

This paper examines whether the renminbi (RMB) has supplanted the US dollar as the major anchor currency in the implicit currency baskets of East Asian economies. First, we demonstrate that existing techniques to address the problem of severe multicollinearity in estimations of the Frankel–Wei regression model, with the movements in both the US dollar and the RMB included on the right-hand side of the equation, remain limited in providing stable and robust results. We then propose a simple modification of the Frankel–Wei regression model to estimate the RMB weight in an economy's implicit currency basket. We show that this new method yields results that are superior to those obtained by existing techniques. Using the new method, we find that the US dollar continues to be the dominant anchor currency and that there is not yet an RMB bloc in East Asia, contrary to claims made by some recent studies. The RMB has taken on some importance in the implicit currency baskets of several East Asian economies in recent years and this appears to have occurred at the expense of the yen. In short, despite the rising importance of the RMB, it has not eclipsed the US dollar as the dominant anchor currency in East Asia. These conclusions are robust to alternative specifications of the modified Frankel–Wei regression model and the use of a structural break estimation technique.

As a result of evaluation of growth rates of major commodity prices and Russian share quotes there is discovered dominating dynamics of shares of Rosneft and Urals oil futures. Assessment of dynamics of RTSI, IMOEX, S&P500, WTI futures, USD/RUB showed IMOEX breakdown from RTSI. RTSI remained with the WTI futures, while IMOEX joined S&P500 trend. As a result of neural network analysis of importance of global indices growth rates there is determined a condition of achievement of their maximum value – minimum growth rate of RTSI and maximum rate of FTSE100 growth. Cluster analysis of the global indices in terms of their growth rates revealed connectivity between RTSI, DJIA and US Dollar Index. Russian economy structure can’t ensure direct connectivity of RTSI and DJIA. RTSI is indirectly connected to DJIA via S&P500. The leading role in this connection belongs to US Dollar Index that largely determines the dynamics of USD/RUB and IMOEX. Cluster analysis in terms of major currencies exchange rates growth defined a USD and CNY currency basket that is acceptable for the Russian economy. Analysis of the Russian finance connectivity has sufficiently identified a basis and conditions of its existence in the context of the strengthening negative factors which bind and overburden the Russian economy with oil dependence.

The International Monetary Fund’s decision in 2015 to add the Renminbi to its Special Drawing Rights currency basket has in effect granted the Chinese Yuan the international reserve currency status. This study revisits China’s five exchange rate regimes in 2005-2015 and investigates the relationships among the currencies of the Chinese Yuan, the U.S. Dollar and the Euro. The Log-Periodic Power Law Singularity model is proposed as a generic parameterization to capture the super-exponential behavior in the tetrad of exchange rates of these currency pairs. The transient non-sustainable faster-than-exponential acceleration of the “CNY against USD” from August 2005 to July 2008 suggests the existence of an apparent bubble with an under-valuation. The clustered signals of LPPLS Confidence indicators for the “CNY against USD” from May 2011 to March 2012 suggest the termination of its long-term growth. The signals for the “EUR against USD” and “CNY against EUR” emerging from January 2014 to August 2015 show a tightly coupled relationship among these currency pairs. Moreover, the empirical estimates of the most possible critical time by the standard Ordinary Least Squares method and the Quantile Regression method for the time series of “CNY against USD” tends to be later than that of “CNY against EUR” in the five regimes.

We calculated the real effective exchange rate indexes and measured their volatilities based on four currency baskets to find which currency basket is optimal for achieving China's policy target of keeping exchange rates stable. The volatility of the bilateral exchange rate between the RMB and the US dollar is also calculated to make a comparative analysis. Results showed that the bilateral exchange rate of the RMB and the US dollar is only stable in special time periods. In most time periods, pegging to the G3 currency basket is optimal to achieve the goal of stabilizing exchange rates while pegging to the AMU currency basket will result in the most volatile exchange rates.

We analyze the period of a managed floating exchange rate policy in China between June 2010 and November 2014. We estimate a time-varying structure of a hypothetical currency basket using the Kalman filter. We show that the exchange rate policy continues to focus on the US dollar. However, its weight has been gradually declining, while this decline has moderated in 2014. The euro played some role before summer 2011, but became negligible after the outbreak of the European sovereign debt crisis. Finally, the Thai baht has positive implicit weights.

We investigate the time variation in the market risk of industry portfolios of Borsa Istanbul with respect to changes in economic conditions by employing the threshold CAPM. The threshold CAPM defines beta as a function of an underlying economic variable, the threshold variable, to allow beta to change between two different regimes when the threshold variable hits a certain threshold level. We use interest rate, currency basket, real effective currency index, and market volatility as candidates for the threshold variable. We find there is a significant time variation in betas with respect to changes in the currency basket level.

Advocates of a more pluralistic international monetary and financial system seek to reduce reliance on a single national currency and to bring international liquidity under collective control. One recently revived proposal would transform US dollar official reserves into claims denominated in the IMF's key currency basket, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Drawing on new archival evidence and simulations, this article highlights issues that derailed earlier agreement on such an account and shortcomings of design and ambition revealed by subsequent developments. One design issue was account losses if US dollar yields failed to exceed SDR yields enough to offset dollar depreciation. In fact, uncovered interest parity did not hold and could well have left the account persistently insolvent. Another shortcoming was ambition: the proposed account proved simply too small to achieve the desired lowering of the dollar's share of foreign exchange reserves. Any new proposal needs to address these shortcomings.

In 2015, the IMF found that the Renminbi met the criteria for inclusion in the SDR basket and the Renminbi became the fifth SDR basket currency with effect from October 1, 2016. This paper reflects on the change from the IMF’s institutional perspective, providing relevant background and insight into the legal aspects of the decision. The addition of the Renminbi to the SDR currency basket by the IMF is the most significant change to the SDR basket in over four decades and may have a lasting impact on the international monetary system.

The article examines the prospects of monetary integration in East Asia and the specific issue of the Asian Currency Unit (ACU) that could potentially become a core element of Asian monetary integration in the long run. The research explores main initiatives underlying financial cooperation and key obstacles hampering monetary integration in the region. The concept of Asian currency unit was introduced by the East Asian countries as one of the mechanisms aimed to ensure regional financial stability. Being a weighted average of regional currencies ACU is highly negatively affected by the volatility of Asian currencies’ exchange rates. That’s why the main aim of the article is to find the “optimal ACU currency basket structure” with minimal variance able to deliver stability in intra-regional exchange rates. The paper offers the author’s attempt to answer three main questions. First, what kind of criteria/macroeconomic indicators must underlie the ACU basket computation. Second, what national currencies should be included in this basket. Third, what weights are to be attributed to the national currencies for achieving an optimal basket structure. The research considers five alternative configurations of the ACU basket. The best one should be neither too rigid nor too volatile; it must be a compromise solution meeting interests of the main regional actors. Initial estimates of the ACU currency weights are based on the RIETI concept that is based on consideration of three main economic indicators, namely, the member countries shares in the aggregate GDP, foreign trade and outward investment. The author complemented the basic methodology by an extra criterion – countries’ shares in aggregate international reserves. The final conclusions on the optimal ACU basket composition are made through the analysis of the aggregated variation coefficient for each alternative set of the national currencies. The coefficient is calculated according to the original method developed by the author. The calculations are based on the national currencies’ monthly exchange rates data generated for the period January 2009 – February 2014. The analysis results in proposition of an optimal ACU basket structure with the calculated optimal countries’ weights. The author gives the recommendations for higher efficiency and regional financial stability.

The collapse of the international monetary system of Bretton Woods ended the period of common use of unified exchange rate system. Current, so-called non-system, is not providing stability in currency relations, which is mainly due to the high volatility of exchange rates. Implementing changes is inevitable. While the unification of exchange rates on an international scale appears to be currently impossible, alike the return to the gold standard, noteworthy is the idea of implementing a global currency, which would be an effective replacement for the US dollar as an international currency. SDRs, based on the rearranged currency basket that include the currencies of developing countries, could successfully play the role of such currency.

Exchange rate regime is a system in which a country manages its currency about other currencies and the foreign exchange market. Currently, there are two major types of exchange rate regimes, i.e., free-float system and pegged system. Many countries, including Indonesia, adopted the free-float system since it is believed as the best regime for absorbing external economic shocks. However, some economists argued that a moderate exchange rate regime, such as currency basket system, is a better approach for achieving the government's goals. The research aims to provide an arrangement for optimal basket weights of Indonesian currency basket to minimise GDP volatility as well as exchange rate volatility. We develop an optimisation model in the extension of Yoshino et al. (2017) by adding five currencies in the basket. We found that the weight currencies in the free-float regime would reflect the trade intensities of the respective countries. Further, the government should monitor the change of exchange rates of currencies in the foreign reserves and change the weight accordingly. In addition, we also found that, whether the government implementing basket currency regime or free-float regime, it will make no significant differential effect on GDP gap volatility.

A strand of literature has focused on inferring the weights of the anchor currencies in a country’s currency basket. With the growing importance of China’s economy, there has been a surging research interest in the role of the renminbi as an international anchor currency and in China’s de facto exchange rate regime. In this article, we show by a simple model and demonstrate using the observed data on the Special Drawing Rights basket that the correct specification to estimate the weights of anchor currencies in a currency basket is to use the rates of change in exchange rates and to write exchange rates in quantity term. When one is to estimate the structure of a currency basket, close attention should be paid to using the rates of change or the levels of exchange rates as well as writing exchange rates in quantity or price term.

The objective of this article is to analyze the behavior of the monetary authorities of Morocco in the readjustment of the official weights of anchor currencies in Dirham basket on April 13, 2015. To do this, we are taking into account the objective of the external financing constraints for comparing, with different scenarios, the optimal weights with the implicit weights of the currencies. Such a comparison proves that the authorities take more into consideration the structure of the commercial exchanges than that of the debt for the choice of the optimal weight of the anchor currency. In the final part of the paper, we have delved deeper into this issue by proposing a detailed sectoral study to examine the impact of the exchange rate on the trade balance for each activity sector. Our intention is to find out which foreign currency seems more volatile against the local currency in order to lead the economy to manage the stability of dirham by increasing its weight in the basket. As a result, the higher price elasticity of the Dollar against the dirham encourages Moroccan monetary authorities to increase its weight in the basket.