Empirical Project Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Empirical Project - Research Paper Example Methodology The study is based extensively on secondary research. The secondary information is from the gold reserves of gold holding IMF countries from a Book and few websites. Literature Review The gold reserve of a country is that gold held by the central bank or nation depicted as a commodity to redeem which assures for the depositors to pay and note holders. Gold is treated as a liquid money which is mainly used for trading purposes against any currency. The gold reserves as on date are exclusively helps in the settling the international transactions. The central banks by the end of 2004 and investment funds held 19% of all above-ground gold as bank reserve assets. It is predicted that the gold mined by the end of 2009 sum up to 165,000 tonnes. Fixed at US$1000/oz. as price, it exceeded in 2008 and 2009, one tonne of gold has a value of approximately US$32.15 million. The overall gold mined so far would exceed US$5 trillion. IMF gold holdings The International Monetary Fund by J une 2009 held 3,217 tonnes (103.4 million oz.) of gold, which is constant over many years. In 2009, the International Monetary Fund announced that it will disburse 12.5% of the gold holdings, a maximum of 12,965,649 fine troy ounces (403.3 tonnes) based on the recent income model as agreed in April 2008, and further declared the sale of 200 tonnes to India, 10 tonnes to Sri Lanka, and further 10 Metric tonnes of Gold was also given to Bangladesh in September 2010 and 2 tonnes to the Bank of Mauritius. These gold were sold in stages at existing market prices. The IMF reiterates book value of its gold which is far below the market value. This book value was SDR 35 in, or about US$47 per troy ounce in the year 2000. Further the resale value of gold reserve value which faced challenge for various causes. In fact, Canada no idea of revaluing the gold reserves, as it may be pushed to sell the gold on the open market and further decline of gold prices may be the result. Officially reported gold holdings Gold reserves per capita The International Monetary Fund’s data on national assets of various countries is give in the following table. The data are put into use by the World Gold Council to systematically rank and report the gold holding of countries and official organizations. The gold holdings given in the table for each country is not physically stored in the country listed, because the central banks did not allow the audits and reserves independently. World official gold holding for some important countries as of December 2010 Rank Country/Organization Gold (tonnes) Gold's share of national forex reserves (%) - Euro Area 10,792.6 60.7% 1 United States 8,133.5 73.9% 2 Germany 3,401.8 70.3% 3 IMF 2,846.7 - 4 Italy 2,451.8 68.6% 5 France 2,435.4 67.2% 6 Switzerland 1,040.1 16.4% 7 Japan 765.2 3.0% 8 Netherlands 612.5 57.5% 9 India 557.7 8.1% 10 ECB 501.4 27.9% 11 United Kingdom 310.3 16.8% 12 Spain 281.6 38.6% 13 Belgium 227.5 36.8% 14 Singapore 127.4 2.5% 15 BIS 120.0 - 16 Australia 79.9 8.1% - World 30,562.5 - Privately held gold As of October 2009, gold exchange-traded funds held 1,750 tonnes of gold for private and institutional investors. Gold Holdings Corp. a publicly listed gold company estimates that the amount of in-ground verified gold resources currently controlled by publicly traded gold mining companies is roughly 50,000 tonnes. Serial Correlation The correlation between the successive