International Currencies: Prospect for the Chinese Renminbi

Preface and acknowledgements This master thesis is the final project for receiving the Master of Science degree in Financial Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The topic was not chosen randomly. China has always been an interesting an appealing country to me, especially after my visit to the country in the spring of 2009. For the last few centuries, the birth of a new superpower often went hand in hand with the international use of its domestic currency. We have seen the Dutch guilder, the pound sterling and the Spanish dollar as major examples. Although there are several bumps in the road to a widely used renminbi, the emergence of China surely increased its potential. It will be interesting to witness the impact of a different future economic hierarchy on the status of the world’s currencies. I would like to thank Agnieszka Markiewicz for her advice and helpful comments. Finally I would like to thank my parents for always supporting me over all these years