Abstract/Summary

This editorial briefly introduces the Lille-Reading Workshop on International Finance, and then reviews the seminal early literature on international reserves, in its first section, and the seven articles published in the present special issue, in the second section. My hope is that our special issue constitutes a timely and representative update on the most recent developments in the theoretical and empirical analysis of international reserves. This topic has always been an issue with immediate and profound policymaking implications. Yet especially now, when our world has unfortunately moved away from economic cooperation and globalisation toward fragmentation into “friendly” and “unfriendly” blocs of countries and an outright “civilisational” war, the articles published herein could provide some research-supported views, possible clues and provisional answers to hard fundamental questions, given the huge uncertainty in the global financial order nowadays.