Risk‐Off Episodes and Swiss Franc Appreciation: The Role of Capital Flows

During episodes of increased global risk aversion, or risk‐off episodes, safe haven currencies such as the Swiss franc tend to appreciate. The immediate impact of a risk‐off shock is an increase in net private inflows to Switzerland, mostly driven by a reduction in Swiss residents’ net purchases of foreign debt securities and reduced foreign exposure by Swiss banks. Given that the bulk of capital movements related to risk‐off episodes is driven by decisions of Swiss residents, capital flow management policies that discriminate based on the residency of the investor (capital controls) are not likely to be effective at reducing the impact of risk‐off episodes. However, prudential policies that limit leveraging or foreign exposure by Swiss banks may diminish the volatility of capital flows during risk‐off episodes.     

An analysis of extreme movements of exchange rates of the main currencies traded in the Foreign Exchange market

This article analyses the extreme movements of exchange rates of the seven main currencies traded in the Foreign Exchange market against the US dollar: Euro, British pound, Canadian dollar, Japanese Yen, Swiss franc, Australian dollar and New Zealand dollar by using tail index indicators. Payaslio?lu (2009) considers the case of the Turkish exchange rate using the traditional Hill (1975) estimator as a tool. In this article, we employ also an alternative estimator proposed in Iglesias and Linton (2009) that is shown to have, in some cases, improved finite sample properties and it provides substantially different results versus the Hill estimator. We find that for the Euro, Japanese Yen, Swiss franc, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollars, the Hill estimator provides a better measure to analyse the extreme behaviour; while for the British pound, the Iglesias and Linton alternative estimator is superior by using Hausman-type tests of misspecification. Measures of value at risk are also provided for the seven markets. We also find that the largest estimated value at risk by far is for the Japanese Yen, followed by the Swiss franc, the Canadian dollar, the Euro, the New Zealand dollar and the Australian dollar. The UK pound has the smallest value at risk when extreme movements occur.     

Market efficiency broadcasted live: ECB code words and euro exchange rates

This paper examines the impact of the European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy on euro exchange rate returns using an event study with intraday data for five currencies (the euro exchange rate versus the US dollar, the British pound, the Canadian dollar, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen). I construct two indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and the press conference. Estimation results show that the surprise component of communication has highly statistically significant effects on exchange rates, whereas the response of euro exchange rates to the unanticipated change in the policy rate is more muted. I also estimate the financial market impact on euro exchange rates of US, European and German macroeconomic news, and I show that the impact of the ECB press conference is economically important. The process of fully incorporating the ECB news shock takes about 1 h, and thus this result suggests that the whole press conference (both the Introductory Statement and the Q&A part) provides valuable information to market participants.     

Carry trade and forward premium puzzle from the perspective of a safe‐haven currency

Swiss franc exchange rates exhibit safe‐haven characteristics, which suggest a close link between the forward premium puzzle and profitability of the carry trade. Our analysis of Swiss franc exchange rates shows that the two phenomena are distinct from each other, thus corroborating U.S. dollar evidence. Persistent exposures to two different global shocks drive the two phenomena in Swiss franc exchange rates. Moreover, we find significant links between expected average Swiss franc exchange rate changes and macroeconomic conditions during the period of the minimum Swiss franc exchange rate against the euro, but not during the rest of the sample period.     

Currency Exposure to Downside Risk: Which Fundamentals Matter?

I study whether or not countries' macroeconomic characteristics are systematically related to their currencies' exposure to the downside market risk. I find that the currency downside risk is strongly associated with the local inflation rate, real interest rate and net foreign asset position. Currencies of countries with high inflation and real interest rates and negative net foreign asset position (debtor countries) are more exposed to the downside risk whereas currencies of countries with low inflation and real interest rates and positive net foreign asset position (creditor countries) exhibit “safe haven” properties. The local real interest rate has the highest explanatory power in accounting for the cross‐section of currency exposure to the downside risk. This suggests that the high currency exposure to the downside risk is a consequence of investments in high‐yield risky countries and flight from them in “hard times”.     

The purchasing power parity of Southeast Asian currencies: A time-varying coefficient approach

The economies of Southeast Asia have undergone several structural changes, including the Asian currency crisis, during the post-Bretton Woods era. We use a time-varying coefficient cointegration model to test for purchasing power parity (PPP) of Southeast Asian currencies and to track changes in purchasing power relationships over time. The main empirical findings are as follows. First, the stability of the relationship between exchange rates and price differentials is strongly rejected. Second, a major structural change occurs at the outbreak of the Asian currency crisis in 1997. Third, when the cointegration vector is allowed to vary with time, we find evidence of a cointegration relationship for four countries in terms of the US dollar and for four countries in terms of the Japanese yen. Therefore, it seems unlikely that Southeast Asian currencies form a “yen bloc.”     

Assessing the Economic Preconditions for a Yen Bloc

Stabilising Asia-Pacific exchange rates by establishing a system of pegs, bands or target zones around the Japanese yen requires the compromise of domestic policy autonomy. The cost of doing so is least when members reaction to economic shocks are symmetric. This study considers which currencies meet this necessary precondition. To assess regional disturbance symmetry the Blanchard and Quah (1989) procedure is employed to distinguish temporary from permanent shocks for paired aggregate output and price time-series. Disturbance correlations between Japan and other Asia-Pacific nations are calculated. Supply-side disturbance correlations are relatively weak and suggest the economic preconditions for a yen bloc are not in place.     

Invoice currency choice,nonlinearities and exchange rate pass-through

ABSTRACT

Estimating time-varying thresholds as a proxy for exporter’s predicted exchange rates, this study proposes a new approach to analyse possible asymmetric behaviour of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) or pricing-to-market (PTM) in Japanese exports between yen appreciation and depreciation periods. Constructing the industry-specific nominal effective exchange rate on a contract (invoice) currency basis, we perform the multivariate threshold near-vector autoregressive (near-MTVAR) estimation and reveal a strong tendency of symmetric ERPT in the short-run, between yen appreciation and depreciation periods. From the 2000s, however, Japanese machinery exporters increased the degree of PTM even in the long-run, while other industries raised the degree of long-run ERPT, reflecting the difference of product differentiation across industries. This evidence has significant implications for the recent unresponsiveness of the Japanese trade balance to the large depreciation of the yen.     

Testing for random walk in euro exchange rates using the subsampling approach

This study utilizes variance ratio tests based on the subsampling approach to test the behaviour of euro-based exchange rates markets. Results are mixed, although the random walk behaviour is dominant among the three major currencies namely the Japanese yen, the US dollar and the British pound.     

Tail behaviour of the euro

This paper empirically analyses risk in the euro relative to other currencies. Comparisons are made between a subperiod encompassing the final transitional stage to full monetary union with a subperiod prior to this. Stability in the face of speculative attack is examined using Extreme Value Theory to obtain estimates of tail exchange rate changes. The findings are encouraging. The euro's common risk measures do not deviate substantially from other currencies. Also, the euro is stable in the face of speculative pressure. For example, the findings consistently show the euro being less risky than the yen, and having similar inherent risk to the Deutsche mark, the currency that it is essentially replacing.     

The franc shock and Swiss GDP: how long does it take to start feeling the pain?

The article addresses the question on what is the typical time horizon over which a full transmission of movements in the real exchange rate takes place into real economy. We base our analysis on the mixed-frequency small-scale dynamic factor model (DFM) proposed by Siliverstovs in 2012 fitted to the Swiss data. In this article, we augment the benchmark model with the real exchange rate of the Swiss franc vis-a-vis currencies of its 24 trading partners, while keeping the rest of model specification intact. We are interested in investigating the relationship between the common latent factor, representing the Swiss business cycle, and the real exchange rate. We explore the temporal relationship between these two variables by varying the time lag with which the real exchange rate enters the factor model by recording the magnitude and statistical significance of the factor loading coefficient in the equation pertaining to the real exchange rate variable. Our main conclusion is that the fluctuations in the exchange rate start influencing real economy after 1 month and their effect is practically over after 13 months. The largest effect is recorded at the time horizon of about 6 to 9 months.     

The Real Yen Exchange Rate and Japanese Productivity Growth

This study investigates the time-series properties of five real yen exchange rates by testing for stationarity in the context of a single structural shift. It finds that all but one of the series are stationary in conjunction with a trend- or mean-break in the late 1950s or early 1970s. By comparison, most real rates for five other industrialized countries are stationary around a constant mean. These findings suggest that the behavior of the real yen exchange rate is unique among the six currencies in the sample, a difference that may originate in the exceptional productivity performance of the Japanese traded-goods sector.     

Exchange-rate pass-through in Japanese export pricing

Two recent aggregative studies claim to demonstrate that Japanese exporters absorb a proportion of exchange-rate changes in their profit margins; but the estimates of this proportion are dramatically different. This study accounts for the discrepancy, and shows that neither estimate is credible. These results identify incomplete pass-through, conditional on costs, as a transitory consequence of export pricing in currencies other than yen. The only long-run effect of the exchange rate on yen-dominated export prices operates through imported materials prices.     

Currency-related risk and risk premium in the world's currency market

The foreign exchange market has become a major arena for investment activity for both corporate and individual investors. Intensive and widespread international investment activity makes the empirical estimation of exchange risk a very topical subject. In this connection, the classic controversy between Hicks and Telser assumes new relevance. In this paper, exchange risk is estimated in the context of the systematic-risk framework. The estimation is performed for three major floating currencies: the English pound, the Swiss franc, and the Deutsche mark, over a four-year period. The results suggest that although the total risk (measured by the variance) is high, the systematic risk is close to zero. This result provides an explanation for the apparent inconsistency between the Hicks-Keynes hypothesis which indicates the existence of a positive risk premium in the forward exchange market and the empirical evidence of a zero risk premium.     

Behavioural equilibrium exchange rate and total misalignment: evidence from the euro exchange rate

In the present paper we attempt to investigate whether the nominal exchange rate of the euro against the currencies of the four major trading partners of the eurozone, namely China, Japan, the UK and the USA, converges or not to its equilibrium level. Applying recent unit root and system cointegration techniques in the presence of structural shifts in the data, our results indicate that there exist an equilibrium relationship between each of the euro/yuan, euro/yen, euro/UK pound and euro/US dollar nominal exchange rates and the fundamentals defined by the monetary model. Following these results, our modified Behavioural Equilibrium Exchange Rate model suggests that at the end of the estimated period, the euro/Chinese yuan and the euro/UK pound nominal exchange rates follow an equilibrium process. Our empirical results also imply that the single European currency is considered as overvalued against the US dollar, while it is considered as undervalued against the Japanese currency.     

Reassessing the evidence of an emerging yen block in North and Southeast Asia

Using weekly observations on 9 Asian currencies from November 1976 to December 2003, we re-examine the evidence of an emerging yen block in North and Southeast Asia. In contrast to previous research that assumes instantaneous adjustment of exchange rates by the region's Central Banks to variations in the world's main global currencies, we use a dynamic general-to-specific Newey–West estimation strategy that allows gradual adjustment and calculation of both short and long run equilibrium responses. We find that there is no de facto yen block, but although the US dollar remains dominant throughout the region, the yen's influence is rising amongst a subset of the currencies since the early 1990s.     

Third-country exchange rate volatility and Japanese–US trade: evidence from industry-level data

As an important economic power globally as well as within Asia, Japan is susceptible to fluctuations in the yen versus both the dollar and its neighbours’ currencies. The resulting risk, from both sources, might, therefore, have important effects on Japanese trade. This study incorporates third-country exchange rate volatility (both yen-renminbi and dollar-renminbi) into a reduced form trade model for industry trade between the US and Japan. As was the case with a previous study that did not include these effects, our cointegration analysis finds that most industries are unaffected by risk. Third-country effects are, however, significant in a number of cases. Interestingly, a large share of US industries find that exports increase due to third-country risk, suggesting that this volatility is encouraging traders to reorient their trade markets by substitution.     

Tail Estimates and the Ems Target Zone*

Characteristically, distributions of exchange-rate returns are fat-tailed. We use a nonparametric tail-index estimator based on extreme value theory for seven EMS currencies between April 1979 and October 1991. We find that the behavior of the Belgian franc, the Danish Krone, the French franc, and the Italian lira has become significantly less fat-tailed over time. We attribute this to the decline in the exchange-rate variance as observed in the EMS, which according to the target-zone literature should lead to a convergence of fixed exchange-rate behavior to that of floating rates. A comparison of tail estimates for the Deutsche mark and dollar exchange rates supports this notion.     

Pricing-to-Market: the Japanese Experience with a Falling Yen and the Asian Crisis

The paper examines whether Japanese exporters changed their strategic pricing behavior as a result of the profit squeeze of the late 1980s. It shows that shocks such as the end-of-bubble, the prolonged yen depreciation, and the Asian crisis affected export prices. These effects, however, are too small to change the long-run equilibrium relation between sectoral export prices and their determinants. In particular, results suggest that Japanese exporters are not using the depreciation of the yen to gain market share.     

日元升值后日本科技投入的变化

二战后至70年代为经济高速增长时期,日本形成政府护航,企业投入为主的科技投入模式。20世纪70至90年代的日元大幅升值,使得这种模式受到冲击,为此,日本政府对科技投入进行了一些调整。本文主要对日元升值后日本科技投入的变化进行了分析和总结。