Dollar reserves and U.S. yields: Identifying the price impact of official flows

Abstract

By exploiting changes in the volatility of U.S. Treasury yields and foreign official (FO) flows into U.S. Treasuries after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, we identify a FO flow shock via heteroskedasticity in a structural VAR. We estimate that a $100B FO flow shock moves 5 and 10-year U.S. yields by about 100 basis points within a month. An event study of the intraday U.S. Treasury yield curve response to Japan’s FX intervention in September 2022 validates our VAR estimates. Our findings imply that a 1% reduction in the Dollar share of China’s reserves could raise long-term U.S. yields by about 20 basis points.