【英文】罗兰贝格报告：如果美元失去了世界储备货币的地位（15页）

Historically, only a handful of countries possessed deep  and liquid markets for domestic currency assets that  were open to the rest of the world. Since the early 2000s, there has been a massive  increase in foreign exchange trading volumes of nontraditional currencies, i.e. currencies other than USD,  EUR, GBP or JPY. Non-traditional currency markets have been very  illiquid due to high transaction costs. To swap these  currencies, FX dealers had to use traditional currencies,  such as the USD, as an intermediary. With the rise of electronic trading platforms and  automatization programs in forex markets, transaction  costs for non-traditional currencies were signifcantly  reduced, thus also reducing the dependency of using  other currencies, including the USD, as an in-between. Furthermore, the growing global network of central  bank currency swap lines enabled institutional investors  to access other currencies more easy.

With central banks assets around the world mounting,  central bank reserve managers have become more  dynamic in chasing returns. When reserves exceed the level associated with reserve  adequacy, reserve managers come to distinguish  diferent reserve tranches. The minimum required for reserve adequacy ("liquidity  tranche"), should be held in liquid, low-risk assets,  while the remainder (the "investment tranche") can be  more actively managed, keeping returns in mind, and  invested in less liquid assets. With the Federal Reserve ofering extremely low  interest rates in recent years as part of its ultra-loose  monetary policy, reserve managers sought out new  investment targets in countries that ofered at least  some yield on safe assets. Contrary to bond yields in the big four currency areas,  namely the US, Eurozone, Japan and UK, volatilityadjusted returns in non-traditional currency markets  have been more attractive in recent years.