More countries raised dollar reserve shares than cut them
More countries increased their dollar reserve share than reduced it over 1999–2025, Thomas Harr finds in a Danmarks Nationalbank working paper. His public-source database covers 149 countries and 23 currencies from 1999 to 2026.
Dollar resilience beneath global totals
Thomas Harr finds that more countries raised their dollar reserve share than cut it over 1999–2025; the reverse holds for the euro.
His country-level results use equal weights, unlike the International Monetary Fund (IMF) aggregates weighted by reserve size, which show a declining dollar share.
Average dollar allocations fell in the 2000s, recovered in the 2010s and stabilised in the 2020s.
Euro allocations followed the opposite path before stabilising.
Renminbi and Canadian dollar holdings gained ground.
Around 60 countries were net gold buyers over 1999–2025, mostly after the 2007–09 financial crisis, but buyers did not reduce dollar shares on average.
The small 2026 sample shows slightly lower dollar and higher euro shares.
Public disclosures reveal allocation choices
Harr constructs the database from public central bank reports and financial statements, excluding gold and IMF Special Drawing Rights from foreign exchange reserves.
Results generally adjust for changing country coverage and exchange-rate valuation effects, but not bond returns because underlying asset data are unavailable.
Central banks most frequently cite liquidity, return and safety, in that order, as allocation determinants.
Harr links the dollar's recovery to funding stress and the euro's decline to sovereign debt concerns.
Country counts are not dollar totals
The results distinguish reserve managers' behaviour from changes in aggregate reserve weights.
Uneven disclosure and missing bond-return adjustments limit the comparison.
Harr presents the conclusions as his own, not Danmarks Nationalbank's views, and leaves open whether the small 2026 sample marks a new trend.