Large gold holdings as part of a central bank’s reserves may be justified but only under particular circumstances, research published by the Bank for International Settlements finds.

Omar Zulaica explores the “special role” that gold plays in portfolios. He seeks to address a shortcoming in the existing literature, which has tended to focus on metrics that are less relevant for central bank reserve managers.

Zulaica focuses on the “co-dependency structure” of gold and fixed-income instruments