Motivated by the observation that a country tends to have more official foreign reserves if its crude oil endowment is large (small) but its productivity is low (high), we develop and estimate a dynamic stochastic optimization model to show that precautionary incentives against oil price shocks can account for a substantial part of the effects of productivity and oil endowment on a country’s foreign reserves. We demonstrate how oil price shocks are absorbed by changes in foreign reserves which, in turn, leads to less variation in aggregate consumption. Along with productivity and oil endowment, we also consider as determinants of foreign reserves conventional variables such as trade-to-GDP ratio and capital openness. Overall, our results suggest that ignoring productivity and oil endowment may lead to large bias in the estimates of some conventional determinants of a country’s foreign reserves.

受观察到，如果一个国家的原油禀赋大（小）但生产率低（高），其官方外汇储备往往更多，我们开发并估计了一个动态随机优化模型，以表明对油价的预防性激励冲击可以解释生产力和石油禀赋对一国外汇储备的影响的很大一部分。我们展示了外汇储备的变化如何吸收石油价格冲击，从而导致总消费的变化较小。除了生产力和石油禀赋外，我们还将贸易占 GDP 的比率和资本开放度等传统变量视为外汇储备的决定因素。全面的，