Exchange Rate Dynamics Redux

Milton Friedman argued that flexible exchange rates would facilitate external adjustment. Recent studies find surprisingly little robust evidence that they do. We argue that this is because they use composite (or aggregate) exchange rate regime classifications, which often mask very heterogeneous bilateral relationships between countries. Constructing a novel dataset of bilateral exchange rate regimes that differentiates by the degree of exchange rate flexibility, as well as by direct and indirect exchange rate relationships, for 181 countries over 1980–2011, we find a significant and empirically robust relationship between exchange rate flexibility and the speed of external adjustment. Our results are supported by several “natural experiments” of exogenous changes in bilateral exchange rate regimes.

This book builds upon the seminal work by Obsfeld and Rogoff, Foundations of International Macroeconomics and provides a coherent and modern framework for thinking about exchange rate dynamics.

This important new book builds upon the seminal work by Obsfeld and Rogoff, Foundations of International Macroeconomics and aims at providing a coherent and modern framework for thinking about exchange rate dynamics. With a wide range of contributions, this book is likely to be welcomed by the macroeconomics and financial community.

A comprehensive and in-depth look at exchange-rate dynamics Variations in the foreign exchange market influence all aspects of the world economy, and understanding these dynamics is one of the great challenges of international economics. This book provides a new, comprehensive, and in-depth examination of the standard theories and latest research in exchange-rate economics. Covering a vast swath of theoretical and empirical work, the book explores established theories of exchange-rate determination using macroeconomic fundamentals, and presents unique microbased approaches that combine the insights of microstructure models with the macroeconomic forces driving currency trading. Macroeconomic models have long assumed that agents—households, firms, financial institutions, and central banks—all have the same information about the structure of the economy and therefore hold the same expectations and uncertainties regarding foreign currency returns. Microbased models, however, look at how heterogeneous information influences the trading decisions of agents and becomes embedded in exchange rates. Replicating key features of actual currency markets, these microbased models generate a rich array of empirical predictions concerning trading patterns and exchange-rate dynamics that are strongly supported by data. The models also show how changing macroeconomic conditions exert an influence on short-term exchange-rate dynamics via their impact on currency trading. Designed for graduate courses in international macroeconomics, international finance, and finance, and as a go-to reference for researchers in international economics, Exchange-Rate Dynamics guides readers through a range of literature on exchange-rate determination, offering fresh insights for further reading and research. Comprehensive and in-depth examination of the latest research in exchange-rate economics Outlines theoretical and empirical research across the spectrum of modeling approaches Presents new results on the importance of currency trading in exchange-rate determination Provides new perspectives on long-standing puzzles in exchange-rate economics End-of-chapter questions cement key ideas

This book collects my scholarly research on the behavior of foreign exchange rates conducted over the past twenty-five years. The collection includes papers that study the behavior of exchange rates from the traditional macroeconomic and newer microstructure perspectives. The former perspective considers the linkages between the macro economy and currency prices in an effort to understand the behavior of exchange rates over quarters, years and decades. By contrast, the microstructure perspective considers how the details of currency trading affect how macroeconomic information becomes embedded in currency prices, a process which drives exchange-rates over intraday horizons. The book also contains papers with a hybrid perspective that consider the details of currency trading and macroeconomic linkages in an effort to understand exchange-rate dynamics across all horizons.