Indexes of the Foreign Exchange Value of the Dollar

At the end of 1998, the staff of the Federal Reserve Board introduced a new set of indexes of the foreign exchange value of the U.S. dollar. The staff made the changeover, from indexes that had been used since the late 1970s, for two reasons. First, five of the ten currencies in the staff's previous main index of the dollar's exchange value were about to be replaced by a single new currency, the euro. Second, developments in international trade since the late 1970s called for a broadening of the scope of the staff's dollar indexes and a closer alignment of the currency weights with U.S. trade patterns. The author discusses several practical aspects of the design and implementation of the exchange rate indexes--the choice of index formula, the design of currency weights, and the selection of currencies. The author also reviews the performance of the indexes over the past twenty-five years and discusses three minor methodological changes that the staff has applied to the indexes since their introduction.