Dollarization, inflation and foreign exchange markets: A cross-country analysis

This article investigates determinants of deepening dollarization and the relationship between exchange rate and inflation across foreign exchange regimes and degrees of dollarization. To this end, the fixed effect models are adopted using 28 country-level panel incorporating countries that have experienced dollarization from 1995 to 2016. The overall estimation results show that first, high inflation, less flexible exchange rate movements, the sluggish real economy and the inadequacy of the institutional environments are contributing factors to intensify the dollarization. Secondly, the estimation results using the de-dollarization country group indicates that real appreciation of the domestic currency is an important factor in mitigating the degree of dollarization while the increasing effects of inflation on dollarization are more pronounced in the dollarized economies. Finally, high dollarization or a high depreciation rate of the domestic currency tends to increase inflation, and those effects are found to have more significant in the dollarized economies, while real depreciation is a factor contributing to lowering inflation.