Abstract

Payments dollarization necessitates firms to take on a burden of currency exchange even for domestic transactions, which is regarded as an economy-wide efficiency loss. However, currency exchange, if seized by banks, can serve as a catalyst for financial development. Using a firm-level dataset from an original survey that reveals the prevalence of currency exchange due to payments dollarization, our study adopts the logit model approach to investigate firms’ decisions on currency exchange methods. The empirical results confirm that firms’ dependence on cash payment and their perception of price differences influence their decisions. Specifically, a high ratio of cash expenditure to total expenditure and their perception of money changers being competitive in price are associated with firms’ preference of money changers to banks. Our findings suggest effective policy interventions for the promotion of currency exchange at banks, including disclosure of currency exchange rates by the central bank for firms’ informed decisions as well as the concurrent promotion of non-cash payment methods.

摘要

支付美元化使企业甚至需要承担国内交易的货币兑换负担，这被认为是整个经济范围内的效率损失。但是，如果被银行抓住，货币兑换可以成为金融发展的催化剂。我们使用来自原始调查的公司级数据集来揭示由于付款美元化而引起的货币兑换的普遍性，我们的研究采用了logit模型方法来调查公司对货币兑换方法的决策。实证结果证实，企业对现金支付的依赖以及对价格差异的感知会影响其决策。具体地说，现金支出占总支出的比率很高，并且他们认为货币兑换商在价格上具有竞争力，这与企业对货币兑换商对银行的偏好有关。