Time-Varying Dependency and Structural Changes in Currency Markets

This study employs Patton's (2006) conditional copula framework to model dynamic conditional joint distribution with currency data for Taiwan and its trading counterparties. Empirical findings suggest that the exchange rate of Taiwan tends to display high tail dependence with those of Asian countries during currency depreciations. Because financial events during the sample period may be the source of structural changes for dependence structure, this study applies Bai and Perron's (1998, 2003) approach to detect the internal structural breaks. Empirical results reveal significant structural changes in the persistence of dependence, especially during the financial crisis of 2008.     

Uncertainty and currency crises: Evidence from survey data

How does uncertainty about fundamentals affect speculation in the foreign exchange markets? This paper studies empirically the role of uncertainty in currency crises. Uncertainty, which is measured using the dispersion of survey forecasts of key macroeconomic variables, is found to have a non-monotonic effect on exchange rate pressures: it heightens speculative pressures when expected fundamentals are good and eases them when they are bad. This prediction is consistent with a broad class of currency crisis theories, ranging from first-generation to global-game models. The proposed empirical strategy remains valid in the presence of forecasters with strategic objectives and addresses potential endogeneity bias by building a novel set of instrumental variables.     

Currency Returns, Intrinsic Value, and Institutional-Investor Flows

We decompose currency returns into (permanent) intrinsic‐value shocks and (transitory) expected‐return shocks. We explore interactions between these shocks, currency returns, and institutional‐investor currency flows. Intrinsic‐value shocks are: dwarfed by expected‐return shocks (yet currency returns overreact to them); unrelated to flows (although expected‐return shocks correlate with flows); and related positively to forecasted cumulated‐interest differentials. These results suggest flows are related to short‐term currency returns, while fundamentals better explain long‐term returns and values. They also rationalize the long‐observed poor performance of exchange‐rate models: by ignoring the distinction between permanent and transitory exchange‐rate changes, prior tests obscure the connection between currencies and fundamentals.     

Do fundamentals matter for the D-Mark/Euro–Dollar? A regime switching approach

In this paper, we demonstrate that there is evidence of an unstable and nonlinear relationship between fundamentals and exchange rates. Modeling this time-varying nature of the importance of fundamentals in a Markov switching framework substantially improves the fit of the real interest rate differential model and leads to parameter estimates, which in one regime are in line with theoretical expectations and allow us to draw reasonable conclusions on the influence of fundamentals on exchange rate dynamics. Factors that prove to be closely related to regime switches are short-term interest rate, inflation differentials and differences in economic growth. Therefore, fundamentals do not only matter for the exchange rate within each regime, but are also related to the switches between the regimes.     

人民币升值预期的影响因素——基于我国汇改后月度数据的经验分析

持续的人民币汇率升值预期是影响我国汇改和金融稳定的一个重要问题。本文从经济基本面、汇率制度和国际因素三个维度选择影响汇率预期的13个经济变量,并利用因子分析和递归方差分解技术进行实证分析。研究发现:经济竞争力因子、美元指数和国际政治压力是影响中长期汇率预期的主要因素,其中净对外资产和相对劳动生产率对预期的方差贡献较大;财政货币政策因子和美元指数是影响短期汇率预期的主要因素,其中利率和美元指数的方差贡献较大。     

Is gold a safe haven or a hedge for the US dollar? Implications for risk management

We assess the role of gold as a safe haven or hedge against the US dollar (USD) using copulas to characterize average and extreme market dependence between gold and the USD. For a wide set of currencies, our empirical evidence revealed (1) positive and significant average dependence between gold and USD depreciation, consistent with the fact that gold can act as hedge against USD rate movements, and (2) symmetric tail dependence between gold and USD exchange rates, indicating that gold can act as an effective safe haven against extreme USD rate movements. We evaluate the implications for mixed gold-currency portfolios, finding evidence of diversification benefits and downside risk reduction that confirms the usefulness of gold in currency portfolio risk management.     

Dollarization and currency exchange

We use a dual currency money search model to study dollarization. Agents hold portfolios consisting of two currencies, one of which is risky. We use numerical methods to solve for the steady-state distributions of currency portfolios, transaction patterns, and value functions. As risk increases, agents increasingly use the safe currency as a medium of exchange—dollarization occurs. Furthermore, the safe currency trades for multiple units of the risky currency. This type of currency exchange, and the corresponding nominal exchange rate, are often observed in black market or unofficial currency exchange markets in developing countries. Due to decentralized trading, a distribution of exchange rates arises, whose mean and variance change in predictable ways when currency risk increases.     

Which Fundamentals Drive Exchange Rates? A Cross‐Sectional Perspective

Standard present‐value models suggest that exchange rates are driven by expected future fundamentals, implying that exchange rates contain information about future fundamentals. We test this key empirical prediction of present‐value models in a sample of 35 currency pairs ranging from 1900 to 2009. Employing a variety of tests, we find that exchange rates have strong and significant predictive power for nominal fundamentals (inflation, money balances, nominal GDP), whereas predictability of real fundamentals and risk premia is much weaker and largely confined to the post–Bretton Woods era. Overall, we uncover ample evidence that future macrofundamentals drive current exchange rates.     

El efecto de la volatilidad del peso mexicano en los rendimientos y riesgo de la Bolsa Mexicana de Valores

The effect of heavy tails due to rare events and different levels of asymmetry associated with high volatility clustering in the emerging financial markets requires sophisticated models for statistical modelling of such stylized facts. This article applies extreme value theory (EVT) to quantify tail risk on the daily returns of Mexican stock market under aggregation of foreign exchange rate risk from January 1971 to December 2010. This study focuses on the maximum-block method and generalized extreme value distribution (GEVD) to model the asymptotic behavior of extreme returns in US dollars. The empirical results show that EVT-Based VaR measured at high confidence levels performs better than simulation historical and delta-normal VaR models on capturing fat-tails in the returns of highly volatile stock markets. Additionally, international investors holding long positions in Mexican stock market are more prone to experience larger potential losses than investors with short positions during local currency depreciation and financial crisis periods.     

Exchange rate regimes,capital controls,and currency crises: Does the bipolar view hold?

This paper empirically examines the link between de facto exchange rate regimes and the incidence of currency crises in 84 countries from 1980 to 2001 using probit models. We employ the de facto classification of Reinhart and Rogoff (2004) that allows us to estimate the impact of relatively long-lived exchange rate regimes on currency crises with much greater precision. We find no evidence that, as the bipolar view argues, intermediate regimes have a significantly higher probability of currency crises than both hard pegs and free floats. Using the combined data of exchange rate regimes and the existence of capital controls, we also find that hard pegs with capital account liberalization have a significantly lower probability of currency crises than intermediate regimes with capital controls and free floats with capital controls. Hence, the bipolar view does not strictly hold in the sense that intermediate regimes are significantly more prone to currency crises than the two extreme regimes. However, the fact that hard pegs with capital account liberalization are substantially less prone to currency crises is worthy of note.     

Properties of foreign exchange risk premiums

We study the properties of foreign exchange risk premiums that can explain the forward bias puzzle, defined as the tendency of high-interest rate currencies to appreciate rather than depreciate. These risk premiums arise endogenously from the no-arbitrage condition relating the term structure of interest rates and exchange rates. Estimating affine (multi-currency) term structure models reveals a noticeable tradeoff between matching depreciation rates and accuracy in pricing bonds. Risk premiums implied by our global affine model generate unbiased predictions for currency excess returns and are closely related to global risk aversion, the business cycle, and traditional exchange rate fundamentals.     

ARDL Approach to the Exchange Rate Overshooting in Taiwan

This paper re-examines Dornbusch’s (1976) sticky-price monetary model to exchange rate determination by employing both conventional Johansen’s (1988, 1990, 1994) maximum likelihood cointegration test and the ARDL Bound test by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) for the monthly data of Taiwan over the period 1986:01 ∼ 2003:04. Ambiguous results are found for the long-run equilibrium relationship between the NTD/USD exchange rate and macro fundamentals. With the advantage that ARDL Bound test incorporates both I(1) and I(0) series, we conclude our empirical evidence that there is no long-run equilibrium relationship between exchange rates and macro fundamentals. Moreover, for the short-run dynamic response, the result from the ARDL-UECM-MAIC (1, 10, 10, 8, 10) setting supports the overshooting of currency depreciation as pre-described by Dornbusch (1976). However, this overshooting phenomenon does not exist the current month, but one month after.JEL Classification: C32, B22, E44     

De facto exchange rate regimes and currency crises: Are pegged regimes with capital account liberalization really more prone to speculative attacks?

This paper empirically examines whether de facto exchange rate regimes affect the occurrence of currency crises in 84 countries over the 1980–2001 period by using the probit model. We employ the de facto classification of Reinhart and Rogoff (2004) that allows us to estimate the impact of relatively long-lived exchange rate regimes on currency crises with much greater precision. We find that pegged regimes significantly decrease the likelihood of currency crises compared with floating regimes. By using the combined data of exchange rate regimes and the existence of capital controls, we also find interesting evidence that pegged regimes with capital account liberalization significantly lower the likelihood of currency crises compared with other regimes. These results are robust to a wide variety of samples and models. From the standpoint of the macroeconomic policy trilemma, we can conjecture that pegged regimes with capital account liberalization are substantially less prone to speculative attacks because they can enhance greater credibility in their currencies by abandoning monetary policy autonomy.     

What slice of the pie? The corporate bond market boom in emerging economies

This paper studies the determinants of shifts in debt composition among emerging market non-financial corporates. We show that the determinants of bond market access in EMs vary with global cyclical conditions and across local and foreign currency markets. We find that the role for institutions and macro fundamentals in creating an enabling environment for markets increased during the post-crisis period for local currency markets. Foreign bank linkages additionally explain why local currency bond markets increasingly substituted for banks in channeling liquidity to EMs. In the case of foreign currency markets, in turn, global cyclical factors accounted for most of the variation. Furthermore, a country’s relative sensitivity to global factors appears to vary with the size of its foreign currency bond market rather than local fundamentals. Our results highlight the risk of capital flow reversal in those EMs that benefited from the upturn in the global financial cycle mostly due to the relative size of their bond markets rather than strong fundamentals.     

投机性货币冲击引发货币危机的条件及防范

由投机性货币冲击所引发的固定汇率制崩溃给实行固定汇率制的国家(或地区)的经济发展蒙上了一层沉重的阴影。为此，本文运用国内外关于货币危机中货币投机性冲击理论的最新研究成果分析了欧洲货币危机和东南亚金融危机中投机冲击致胜的基本条件，进而提出了我国加入WTO后防范和化解人民币危机的相关措施。     

A fundamental theory of exchange rates and direct currency trades

In this paper we construct a two-country search model to determine the nominal exchange rate between two fiat monies. Our model allows agents to use any currency to trade for goods in all countries. However, search frictions restrict agents’ opportunities for instantaneous arbitrage, and hence make the nominal exchange rate determinate. The nominal exchange rate depends on the two countries’ economic fundamentals, including the stocks and growth rates of the two monies. Direct exchanges between currencies are essential and they imply a nominal exchange rate that is different from the relative price between the two currencies in the goods markets. There are persistent violations of the law of one price and purchasing power parity in equilibrium, despite the fact that prices are perfectly flexible and all goods are tradeable between countries. Nominal and real exchange rates can move together in the steady state in response to money growth shocks.     

Private information in currency markets

Using daily abnormal currency returns for the universe of countries with flexible exchange rates, we show local currency depreciations ahead of unscheduled, public sovereign debt downgrade announcements. Consistent with the private information hypothesis, the effect is stronger in lower institutional quality countries and holds after we control for concurrent public information and for publicly available rumors about the forthcoming downgrades. Our results persist when abnormal currency returns are adjusted for global carry and dollar risk factors, world equity and bond returns, as well as local stock market returns. Finally, the currency depreciations are permanent, providing evidence for a link between fundamentals and currency markets.     

Asymmetry in the effects of economic fundamentals on rising and falling exchange rates

Empirical research provides evidence for exchange rates overreaction to changes in economic fundamentals over a short run, but convergence in a long run. In this research we use statistical method developed by Cox [Cox, D.R., “Regression models and life-tables,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), Vol. 34, Iss. 2 (1972), 187-220.] to examine the differences in the effects of local economic fundamentals on the probability of occurrence of extreme fluctuations in exchange rates over time periods of rising and falling exchange rates. We identify an extreme fluctuation as a 10% decrease or increase in exchange rate over a three month period and 20% over a one year period. We find asymmetry in the effects of economic fundamentals on exchange rates (eight countries' exchange rates quoted as f/$) during time periods of rising and falling exchange rates: the probability of extreme fluctuation is greater during time periods of rising exchange rates as compared to falling.     

Who times the foreign exchange market? Corporate speculation and CEO characteristics

This paper shows that managers' personal beliefs and individual characteristics explain a large share of the substantial time-variation of derivative use beyond firm, industry, and market fundamentals. We construct a panel data set of foreign currency derivative holdings and currency exposures for U.S. non-financial firms. We use a novel approach to build a firm-specific foreign exchange return. We find that managers adjust derivatives notional amounts in response to past foreign exchange returns, as if they were forming views on future currency prices. We then construct an empirical measure of speculative behavior for each firm to investigate the profile of the speculator. Firms where the CEO holds an MBA degree, is younger, and has less previous working experience speculate more. These results are consistent with overconfident managers taking more risk.     

Exchange rate regimes, banking and the non-tradable sector

This paper presents a small-open-economy, two-good version of the Diamond and Dybvig model with cash constraints to analyze the implications on banking of different exchange rate regimes and monetary policies. I show that fixed exchange rates with a Central Bank providing liquidity in local currency imply Pareto efficiency, with conditions for a run equilibrium stronger than in the literature. In a flexible exchange rate regime, multiple equilibria may not be eliminated. In particular, for very a expansive monetary policy there exists an equilibrium where a fraction of patient consumers purchases dollars in the interim period, which constitutes a partial currency run. A dollarized banking system without international short-run credit may also implement the efficient allocation under certain conditions.