Bucking the buck : US financial sanctions and the international backlash against the dollar / Daniel McDowell.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Financial sanctions and political risk in the international currency system -- The source and exercise of American financial power -- Sanctions, political risk, and the reserve currency role -- The anti-dollar gold rush : central bank reserves in the age of financial sanctions -- Sanctions, political risk, and the dollar as international payments currency -- Payment politics : anti-dollar responses to sanctions in trade settlement -- Financial sanctions and the dollar's rivals -- Sanctions and China's play for payments power.

"The book's central claim is that US financial sanctions generate political risk in the international currency system. Political risk is defined here as the potential for a political act to raise the expected costs of using a currency for cross-border transactions or as a store of value. Over time, the accumulation of political risk in the system creates incentives for governments to adopt anti-dollar policies to promote the use of currencies or assets other than the dollar for investment and cross-border transactions. Of course, anti-dollar policies may fail. Thus, on their own they do not imply that the dollar is playing a diminishing role in a country's international economic relations. They merely indicate that the government is attempting to bring about such a shift. When sanctions-induced anti-dollar policies do successfully reduce reliance on the dollar, it signifies de-dollarization-the intentional reduction of the dollar's role in a nation's cross-border economic activities. The book explores this argument with a series of empirical chapters that examine the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a period in which the United States steadily increased its use of financial sanctions against foreign adversaries and pariah states"--