“…International reserve accumulation has been studied extensively by researchers in the field of international macroeconomics, both empirically and theoretically. They have considered its role as a self-insurance or precautionary savings due to roll-over risk ( Bianchi et al, 2016;Hur and Kondo, 2016;Jeanne, 2007;Jeanne and Rancière, 2011 ), investigated its connection to an export-led growth strategy ( Dooley et al, 2003 ) and ( Bernanke, 2005;Dooley et al, 2005 ), looked into tensions between mercantilistic and insurance motives and ( Aizenman and Lee, 2008;Beck and Weber, 2011;Calvo et al, 2012;Choi and Taylor, 2017;Ghosh et al, 2017 ), examined connections to financial instability ( Obstfeld et al, 2010 ), explored it as a crisis-easing mechanism ( Bussière et al, 2015;Dominguez et al, 2012 ), and probed its relationship to financial development and openness ( Bacchetta et al, 2013;Benigno and Fornaro, 2012;He and Luk, 2017;Jeanne, 2013;Wen, 2011 ). To our knowledge, we are the first to formally apply the idea of model uncertainty to understand the surge in international reserves after the Asian Financial Crisis.…”