Enhancing International Monetary Stability A Role for the SDR? Prepared by the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department In collaboration with the Finance, Legal, Monetary and Capital Markets Departments, January 7, 2011
“The SDR has enjoyed renewed attention lately in the context of debates on international monetary reform. To be sure, the term SDR has been used to refer to three different concepts (i) a composite reserve asset created in 1969: the official SDR as defined in the Funds Articles; (ii) a potential new class of reserve assets: tradable SDR denominated securities issued by the Fund or an investment vehicle backed by a subset of the Funds membership; and (iii) a unit of account, which could be used to price internationally traded assets (e.g., sovereign bonds) and goods (e.g., commodities), to peg currencies, and to report balance of payments data. All three are discussed here.”
