[This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the short-horizon predictive ability of economic fundamentals and forward premiums on monthly exchange-rate returns in a framework that allows for volatility timing. We implement Bayesian methods for estimation and ranking of a set of empirical exchange rate models, and construct combined forecasts based on Bayesian model averaging. More importantly, we assess the economic value of the in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting power of the empirical models, and find two key results: (1) a risk-averse investor will pay a high performance fee to switch from a dynamic portfolio strategy based on the random walk model to one that conditions on the forward premium with stochastic volatility innovations and (2) strategies based on combined forecasts yield large economic gains over the random walk benchmark. These two results are robust to reasonably high transaction costs.]

We show that a global imbalance risk factor that captures the spread in countries' external imbalances and their propensity to issue external liabilities in foreign currency explains the cross-sectional variation in currency excess returns. The economic intuition is simple: net debtor countries offer a currency risk premium to compensate investors willing to finance negative external imbalances because their currencies depreciate in bad times. This mechanism is consistent with exchange rate theory based on capital flows in imperfect financial markets. We also find that the global imbalance factor is priced in cross-sections of other major asset markets.

This article examines the dynamic relationship between two key US money market interest rates––the federal funds rate (FF) and the 3-month Treasury bill rate. Using daily data over the period from 1974 to 1999, we find a long-run relationship between these two rates that is remarkably stable across monetary policy regimes of interest rate and monetary aggregate targeting. Employing a nonlinear asymmetric vector equilibrium correction model, which is novel in this context, we find that most of the adjustment toward the long-run equilibrium occurs through the FF. In turn, there is strong evidence for the existence of significant asymmetries and nonlinearities in interest rate dynamics that have implications for the conventional view of interest rate behavior.

We provide empirical evidence that deviations from the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) condition display significant nonlinearities, consistent with theories based on transactions costs or limits to speculation. This evidence suggests that the forward bias documented in the literature may be less indicative of major market inefficiencies than previously thought. Monte Carlo experiments allow us to reconcile theseresults with the large empirical literature on the forward bias puzzle since we show that, if the true process of UIP deviations were of the nonlinear form we consider, estimation of conventional spot-forward regressions would generate the anomalies documented in previous research.

This paper examines the exchange rate predictability stemming from the equilibrium model of international financial adjustment developed by Gourinchas and Rey (2007). Using predictive variables that measure cyclical external imbalances for country pairs, we assess the ability of this model to forecast out-of-sample four major U.S. dollar exchange rates using various economic criteria of model evaluation. The analysis shows that the model provides economic value to a risk-averse investor, delivering substantial utility gains when switching from a portfolio strategy based on the random walk benchmark to one that conditions on cyclical external imbalances.

Our paper assesses progress made by the profession in understanding whether and how exchange rate intervention works. We review theory and evidence on official intervention, concentrating primarily on work published in the last decade or so. We conclude that, unlike the profession's consensus of the 1980s, official intervention can be effective, especially as a signal of policy intentions and when publicly announced and concerted. We note an apparent empirical puzzle concerning the secrecy of much intervention and suggest another way for intervention to be effective which has received little attention in the literature, namely by remedying a coordination failure in the foreign exchange market.

We propose an empirical model for deviations from long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) that simultaneously accounts for three key features: (i) adjustment toward PPP may occur via nominal exchange rates and relative prices at different speeds; (ii) different exchange rate regimes may generate regime shifts in the structural dynamics of PPP deviations; (iii) nonlinear reversion toward PPP in response to shocks. This empirical framework encompasses and synthesizes much previous empirical research. Using over a century of data for the G5 countries, we provide evidence that long-run PPP holds, the relative importance of nominal exchange rates and prices in restoring PPP varies over time and across different exchange rate regimes, and reversion to PPP occurs nonlinearly, at a speed that is fairly consistent with the nominal rigidities suggested by conventional open economy models.

Using model-free skewness measures that exploit the asymmetry in semivariances and option data from the over-the-counter currency market, we find that buying currencies with a high skewness risk premium (SRP) and selling currencies with a low SRP generates high returns and a Sharpe ratio. Asset pricing tests—which control for omitted variables and measurement errors—show that a SRP factor enters the currency pricing kernel and is central to the pricing of risks inherent in a broad currency cross section of 60 portfolio excess returns. These results imply that skewness risk is a strong and priced source of currency risk.

Applying standard portfolio-sort techniques to bank asset returns for 15 countries from 2004 to 2018, we uncover a risk premium associated with implicit government guarantees. This risk premium is intimately tied to sovereign risk, suggesting that guaranteed banks, defined as those of particular importance to the national economy, inherit the risk of the guarantor. Indeed, this premium does not exist in safe-haven countries. We rationalize these findings with a model in which implicit government guarantees are risky in the sense that they provide protection that depends on the aggregate state of the economy.