This paper analyzes the panel data of biweekly surveys on the yen/dollar exchange rate expectations of forty-four institutions for two years, and contains four major findings. First, market participants are heterogeneous; that is, significant "individual effects" exist in their expectation formation. Second, the individual effects have a characteristic of "wishful expectations": exporters expect yen depreciation, and importers expect yen appreciation (relative to others). Third, many violate the rational expectations hypothesis. Fourth, forecasts with long horizons showed less yen appreciation than those with short horizons. Cross-equation constraints implied by the consistency of the forecast term structure are strongly rejected in the data.

This paper defines and tests a form of market efficiency called market dexterity which requires that asset prices adjust instantaneously and completely in response to new information. Examining the behavior of the yen/dollar exchange rate while each of the major markets are open it is possible to test for informational effects from one market to the next. Assuming that news has only country specific autocorrelation such as a heat wave. any intra-daily volatility spillovers (meteor showers) become evidence against market dexterity. ARCH models are employed to model heteroskedasticity across intra-daily market segments. Statistical tests lead to the rejection of the heat wave and therefore the market dexterity hypothesis. Using a volatility type of vector autoregression we examine the impact of news in one market on the time path of volatility in other markets.