Impact of Macroeconomic Announcements on Foreign Exchange Volatility: Evidence from South Africa

This study focuses on scheduled macroeconomic news announcements and evaluates their impact on the volatility of the South African rand (ZAR) and US dollar (USD) exchange rate using high frequency data. The following asymmetries are studied: news items by geographical location, no‐news vs. surprise news announcements and positive vs. negative news announcements. We make the following findings in our empirical study: (i) After the release of a news announcement, the level of foreign exchange volatility rises. This is independent of whether the news item surprised the market or not. (ii) Both South African and US news items significantly impact USD/ZAR volatility, suggesting that the news items are being used to formulate investor expectations regarding the future prospects of the currency pair. (iii) Negative news appears to have a greater impact on exchange rate volatility relative to positive news. This result is also state dependent, as investors tend to behave differently to news depending on the economic climate at that point in time. Investor cognitive biases give rise to the asymmetric news effects on exchange rate volatility. Finally, investors do not always act in rational manner, especially when faced with multiple news items that are contradictory to each other.     

Asymmetries and state dependence: The impact of macro surprises on intraday exchange rates

This paper investigates the possible asymmetric response of 5-min intraday JPY/USD exchange rates to macroeconomic news announcements during 1999–2006 when the Japanese money market interest rate was effectively zero. This period provides a unique institutional setting when interest rates may rise but not decline, thereby constraining both endogenous policy reactions to news and private market expectations. Asymmetric responses to news, to the extent that they are important in exchange rate markets as they are in equity markets, would seem particularly likely to be evident during this period. We consider several ways asymmetric responses may be manifested and linked to macroeconomic news during this unusual period. We assess whether the intraday exchange rate responds differently depending on whether the news is emanating from Japan or the US; we consider the state of the business cycle; and we distinguish between “good” and “bad” news.     

Aggregate trading behaviour of technical models and the yen/dollar exchange rate 1976–2007

The study analyzes the interaction between the trading behaviour of 1024 moving average and momentum models and the fluctuations of the yen/dollar exchange rate. I show first that these models would have exploited exchange rate trends quite profitably between 1976 and 2007. I then show that the aggregate transactions and positions of technical models exert an excess demand pressure on currency markets since they are mostly on the same side of the market. When technical models produce trading signals almost all of them are either buying or selling, when they maintain open positions they are either long or short. A strong interaction prevails between exchange rate movements and the transactions triggered by technical models. An initial rise of the exchange rate due to news, e.g., is systematically lengthened through a sequence of technical buy signals.     

Oil supply news shock and Chinese economy

This paper studies the effects of the oil supply news shock on the Chinese economy using a novel approach as newly proposed in Känzig (2021). Specifically, we use the changes of West Texas Intermediate oil futures prices around OPEC meeting announcements as a high-frequency instrument in a structural VAR model to identify the oil supply news shock. Our results suggest that the Chinese domestic economy is not affected significantly by the shock in terms of industrial production and CPI, two important macroeconomic indicators. However, due to the global features of the international trade, China's exchange rate and trade balance respond to the shock.     

Do Monetary Policy Announcements Affect Exchange Rate Returns and Volatility of Returns? Some Evidence from High‐Frequency Intra‐Day South African Data

This paper examines the temporal effect of domestic monetary policy surprises on both returns and volatility of returns of the South African rand/U.S. dollar exchange rate. The analysis in this “event study” proceeds using intra‐day minute‐by‐minute exchange rate data, repo rate data from the South African Reserve Bank's scheduled monetary policy announcements, and market consensus repo rate forecasts. A carefully selected sample over the period August 2003 to November 2017 ensures that the change in monetary policy is exogenous to the exchange rate. We find statistically and economically significant responses in intra‐day high‐frequency South African rand/U.S. dollar exchange rate returns and volatility of exchange rate returns to domestic interest rate surprises, but anticipated changes have no bearing on exchange rate returns and their volatility. The empirical results also indicate that there is an instantaneous response of the rand/dollar exchange rate to monetary policy surprises and that monetary policy news is an important determinant of the exchange rate until at least 42 minutes after the pronouncement – suggesting a high degree of market “efficiency” in its mechanical sense (although not necessarily in the deeper economic‐informational sense) in processing this information. Essentially, the asymmetric GARCH results exhibit no leverage effects – positive and negative information shocks have symmetric effects on conditional variance.     

Estimating Korea's Exchange Rate Exposure

This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the exchange rate exposure of 392 Korean firms by employing not only changes in the exchange rate but also the standard deviation of exchange rates as foreign exchange risk. A logit model is also used to identify the major factors in exchange rate exposure. The empirical results in the case of using the standard deviation of exchange rates suggest that: the number of firms showing significant exchange rate exposure has been relatively increasing; exchange rate exposure is more likely for export‐oriented manufacturing industries than for nonmanufacturing industries; and large firms using hedging methods are likely to show a low degree of exchange rate exposure.     

Exchange rate regimes and uncertainty

Conclusion This paper examines the change in exchange rate uncertainty between the Bretton Woods and floating exchange rate periods. We estimate both the unconditional variance and the conditional variance of the DM/dollar exchange rate under each exchange rate regime. The former is estimated on the basis of the coefficient of variation and the latter on the basis of a GARCH model. Our GARCH results show that the unconditional variance greatlyunderstates the change in exchange rate uncertainty that resulted from the switch to a flexible exchange rate regime.     

The Efficacy of Official Intervention in the Foreign Exchange Market in Malawi

Abstract: This paper analyses the effectiveness of foreign exchange market interventions by the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM). We use a GARCH (1, 1) model to simultaneously estimate the effect of intervention on the mean and volatility of the Malawi kwacha. Results from the GARCH model indicate that net sales of US dollars by the RBM depreciate, rather than appreciate, the kwacha. Empirically, this implies the RBM ‘leans against the wind’, that is, the RBM intervenes to reduce, but not reverse, exchange rate depreciation. On the other hand, results for the GARCH model for the post‐2003 period indicate the RBM intervention in the market stabilizes the kwacha. In general, results for the entire study period show that the RBM interventions have been associated with increased exchange rate volatility, with the only exception being the post‐2003 period. The implication of this finding is that intervention can only have a temporary influence on the exchange rate.     

Comparing Exchange Market Pressure across Five African Countries

This paper compares the credibility of exchange rate arrangements for the five African countries which are members of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries and will be referred to as Afro-Luso. Our working hypothesis is that credibility necessarily implies low mean exchange market pressure (EMP), low EMP conditional volatility and low-severity EMP crises under financial-market integration. In addition, economic fundamentals must account for EMP dynamics. We also seek evidence of a risk–return relationship for mean EMP and of “bad news” (negative shocks) having a greater impact on EMP volatility than “good news” (positive shocks). Using our econometric models, we are able to rank Afro-Luso countries’ conditional volatility in ordinal terms. Our main conclusion is that countries with currency pegs, such as Guinea-Bissau (GB) and Cape Verde (CV), clearly have lower volatility when compared to those with managed floats and are therefore more credible. Moreover, EMP crises episodes under pegs are much less severe. We find that economic fundamentals correctly account for mean EMP in all countries and that the risk–return relationship is much more favourable for investors under currency pegs, as the increase in volatility is lower for the same rate of return. The exception to this finding is Mozambique (MOZ), which apparently has a risk–return profile akin to that enjoyed by countries with pegs. A plausible reason is that MOZ has the only managed float in our sample implementing monetary and exchange rate policy within the confines of an IMF framework, which establishes floors for international reserves and ceilings for the central bank’s net domestic assets. This intuition needs to be tested, however. EMP conditional volatility, meanwhile, is generally driven by changes in domestic credit (lowers it) and foreign reserve changes (raises it). The first effect is more pronounced under currency pegs, but also under MOZ’s managed float. “Bad news” increases volatility more that “good news” only in the case of CV’s currency peg, which we take to be another sign of its credibility. A few striking cross-country comparisons also emerge in our analysis. Among countries with managed floats, Angola (ANG) has the most severe EMP crises, MOZ the least severe and São Tomé &; Príncipe (STP) lies between the two extremes but closer to MOZ.     

基于Copula-vines的欧元汇率波动相关性实证研究

欧洲债务危机后,欧元汇率变动趋势值得关注。文章利用copula vines类模型,在考虑汇率条件波动相关性及汇率波动边际分布独立性的条件下,研究了欧元对美元、人民币、港元和日元四种货币汇率波动的相关性。研究结果表明,欧元对美元汇率同欧元对其他三种货币汇率波动存在不一致性,而在欧元对美元汇率既定条件下,欧元对人民币汇率与欧元对港元汇率、欧元对日元汇率的条件相关基本一致,在欧元对美元汇率、欧元对人民币汇率不变的情况下,欧元对港元汇率同欧元对日元汇率的相关性程度很低。     

The J-curve Revisited: An Empirical Analysis for Canada

This paper examines exchange rate and trade data to determine whether J-curve effects have occurred for Canada in recent history. With a unique set of data on import and export volumes, the response of the trade balance and its components to exchange rate changes are determined empirically over 1981:1–2005:12 through impulse response functions. The responses have taken into account dominant long-run feedback effects, where the long-run parameters have been estimated by the Johansen cointegration technique. The results show the J-curve phenomenon does not exist for Canada. Robustness checks show the results do not change when looking at the responses over the pre-NAFTA and NAFTA periods.      

Remittances and Competitiveness: The Case of the Philippines

The paper looks at the impact of migration and workers’ remittances on the competitiveness of the home economy. It extends existing research that concentrated on the exchange rate effects of remittances, the so-called Dutch disease effect, by adding labor market effects. The results show that the labor market effects of emigration and remittances have a significant impact on competitiveness that goes beyond the traditional exchange rate effect.     

Exchange Rate Volatility and Trade: An Empirical Investigation from Cross‐country Comparison

Abstract: This paper investigates empirically the impact of exchange rate volatility on the trade flows of six countries over the quarterly period of 1980–2005. The impact of a volatility term on trade is examined by using an Engle‐Granger residual‐based cointegrating technique. The major results show that increases in the volatility of the real exchange rate, approximating exchange‐rate uncertainty, exert a significant negative effect on trade for South Korea, Pakistan, Poland and South Africa and a positive effect for Turkey and Hungary in the long run.     

Voluntary Disclosures When There Is an Option to Delay Disclosure

What incentives drive managers to disclose immediately when they have an option to delay disclosures? I examine this question in a two-period setting in which public news that is positively correlated with firm value arrives periodically. I show that, when the manager's likelihood of receiving information is independent of the public news, an informed manager is more likely to disclose immediately when the public news is good. This happens even as the disclosure threshold itself increases in the public news. My model provides a potential explanation for why managers have a higher propensity to provide earnings forecasts when current earnings are high. I also show that, even when disclosures are credible, the average price reaction to a voluntary disclosure is (i) decreasing in the magnitude of the public news and (ii) lower when the manager is more myopic. These results have potential implications for studies that use stock returns to measure the news contained in management disclosures.     

金融元素的变动对通货膨胀影响的实证研究

本文主要研究货币供应量(M2)、外汇储备、汇率、国际石油价格变动对通货膨胀的影响。构建VAR模型和向量误差修正模型,通过脉冲响应函数和方差分解分析了金融元素对CPI的影响。实证结果表明:货币供给量、外汇储备、汇率和CPI之间存在一种长期的稳定关系,外汇储备和汇率的变动对通货膨胀的影响皆较小。CPI与实际有效汇率间存在负相关关系。国际石油价格变动对通货膨胀的影响较大,汇率变动对通货膨胀的影响较小,说明汇率对价格传递的不完全性。     

What influences aggregate inflation expectations of households in India?

We analyse the factors influencing Indian households’ inflation expectations and draw out implications for inflation targeting. The literature finds news on inflation affecting expectations. Using quarterly data from India over 2008–2019, we find: (i) in estimated epidemiological models of learning in expectation formation, the response coefficient on inflation news in the shape of central bank forecasts exceeds coefficients estimated for advanced economies, implying official views having a relatively greater weight on expectations; (ii) error variance decompositions of expectations to shocks in variables including commodity and core inflations, demand and policy variables in a series of SVARs, also show policy communications affecting expectations in the short-term. Food inflation has a significant short-run effect on expectations, but demand determined core inflation dominates over the long run; (iii) impulse responses show a rise in the policy rate raising expectations. The above results show communications as more effective than policy rates in influencing inflation expectations.     

人民币汇率变动对云南-澜湄国家出口贸易的影响研究

云南是中国和澜湄合作的交汇点和进入东南亚市场的契入点。近年来，云南省对澜湄国家的出口额逐年增长。利用2002—2019年的相关数据，建立自回归分布滞后-误差修正模型（ARDL-ECM）进行实证分析，探讨人民币汇率变动对云南对澜湄国家出口贸易额的影响。研究结果表明：长期来看，人民币汇率上升会促进云南出口澜湄国家的贸易，短期来看，人民币汇率的影响并不显著；对于不同国家而言，人民币贬值会减少云南对越南的出口贸易额，对其他的国家影响并不显著。     

全球疫情冲击下的我国央行最优货币政策选择

在全球新冠病毒疫情冲击下，外国需求降低和国际大宗商品价格波动对我国实体经济造成了冲击，文章通过构建包含贸易和非贸易两部门的开放经济DSGE模型，利用脉冲响应和福利分析研究央行"双政策双工具"下的最优货币政策组合。结果表明："保增长"的利率政策和"稳汇率"的汇率政策，能够更好的缓释新冠疫情带来的外部冲击，在"保增长"的利率政策下家庭福利水平高于"防通胀"的利率政策，而在"稳汇率"的汇率政策下家庭福利水平高于"稳货币"的汇率政策，因此，通过确定"保增长"和"稳汇率"的货币政策短期目标更有利于缓释外部环境对于本国贸易部门的冲击。     

Monetary policy,exchange rate targeting and fear of floating in emerging market economies

This paper investigates whether central banks in emerging markets systematically respond to exchange rate movements. It estimates a structural general equilibrium model of a small open economy with an exchange rate-augmented Taylor-type rule for four countries. The results show that over the entire sample-period, South Africa and Mexico do not target the exchange rate, whereas Indonesia and Thailand do. In the 1980s and 1990s, all four countries targeted the exchange rate but in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, the Mexican peso crisis, and the end of apartheid, they all liberalized their exchange rate regimes, shifting toward inflation targeting.     

The Ottoman dissolution and the İstanbul bourse between war and peace: a foreign exchange market perspective on the Great War

The participation of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War caused economic disruptions, huge budget deficits, surmounted inflation rates and excessive depreciation of Lira, the Ottoman currency. Based on the value of Lira against the currencies of Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden that were not in the war, we focus on the effects of news about the war on the foreign exchange rates at the ?stanbul bourse from 1918 to 1919. Our results signify some dates, which match the announcements of the armistices and peace meetings, heralding continuous depreciation of Lira. Thus, the findings support the presence of an expectation on the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire with the peace, marked by the escalation of the loss in trust for the Lira and the power of the state in foreign exchange interventions.