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

支付美元化迫使企业承担货币兑换的负担，即使是国内交易，这被视为整个经济体的效率损失。然而，货币兑换如果被银行接管，可以成为金融发展的催化剂。我们的研究使用来自原始调查的公司级数据集，该数据集揭示了由于支付美元化而导致货币兑换的普遍性，我们的研究采用逻辑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和他们对价格差异的看法会影响他们的决策。具体而言，现金支出占总支出的高比率以及他们认为货币兑换商在价格上具有竞争力的看法与公司对货币兑换商的偏好高于银行有关。