Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 11.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Asset prices, exchange rates and the current account
This paper analyses the role of asset prices in comparison to other factors, in particular exchange rates, as a driver of the US trade balance. It employs a Bayesian structural VAR model that requires imposing only a minimum of economically meaningful sign restrictions. We find that equity market shocks and housing price shocks have been major determinants of the US current account in the past, accounting for up to 32% of the movements of the US trade balance at a horizon of 20 quarters. By contrast, shocks to the real exchange rate have been much less relevant, explaining less than 7% and ...
Working Paper
The empirical failure of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of bond yields
This paper tests the expectations hypothesis (EH) using US monthly data for bond yields spanning the 1952-2003 sample period and ranging in maturity from 1 month to 10 years. We apply the Lagrange multiplier test developed by Bekaert and Hodrick (2001) and extend it to increase the test power: (a) by introducing economic variables as conditioning information; and (b) by using more than two bond yields in the model and testing the EH jointly on more than one pair of yields. While the conventional bivariate procedure provides mixed results, the more powerful testing procedures suggest rejection ...
Working Paper
The dynamic relationship between the federal funds rate and the Treasury bill rate: an empirical investigation
This article examines the dynamic relationship between two key U.S. money market interest rates - the federal funds rate and the 3-month Treasury bill rate. Using daily data over the period 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 non-linear asymmetric vector equilibrium correction model, which is novel in this context, we find that most of the adjustment towards the long-run equilibrium occurs through the federal funds rates. In turn, there is ...
Working Paper
What's unique about the federal funds rate? evidence from a spectral perspective
A large empirical literature attempts to identify US monetary policy shocks using the effective federal funds rate. This paper compares the time series behavior of the effective federal funds rate to 10 US interest rates with maturities ranging form overnight to 10 years. Using a spectral estimation procedure that is particularly suitable and novel in the context, we identify idiosyncratic shocks to the federal funds rate and provide evidence on their impact on other US interest rates at various frequencies. Our results suggest that, while all of the interest rates examined have common shocks ...
Working Paper
How well do monetary fundamentals forecast exchange rates?
For many years after the seminal work of the Meese and Rogoff (1983a), conventional wisdom held that exchange rates could not be forecast from monetary fundamentals. Monetary models of exchange rate determination were generally unable to beat even a naive no-change model in out-of-sample forecasting. More recently, the use of sophisticated econometric techniques, panel data, and long spans of data has convinced some researchers (Mark and Sul, 2001) that monetary models can forecast a small, but statistically significant part of the variation in exchange rates. Others remain skeptical, however ...
Working Paper
Federal funds rate prediction
We examine the forecasting performance of a range of time-series models of the daily US effective federal funds (FF) rate recently proposed in the literature. We find that: (i) most of the models and predictor variables considered produce satisfactory one-day-ahead forecasts of the FF rate; (ii) the best forecasting model is a simple univariate model where the future FF rate is forecast using the current difference between the FF rate and its target; (iii) combining the forecasts from various models generally yields modest improvements on the best performing model. These results have a ...
Journal Article
How well do monetary fundamentals forecast exchange rates?
For many years after the seminal work of Meese and Rogoff (1983a), conventional wisdom held that exchange rates could not be forecast from monetary fundamentals. Monetary models of exchange rate determination were generally unable to beat even a nave no-change model in out-of-sample forecasting. More recently, the use of sophisticated econometric techniques, panel data, and long spans of data has convinced some researchers (Mark and Sul, 2001) that monetary models can forecast a small, but statistically significant part of the variation in exchange rates. Others remain skeptical, however ...
Journal Article
Toward a new paradigm in open economy modeling: where do we stand?
This paper provides a selective, up-to-date survey of the recent, fast-growing literature on new open economy macroeconomics. Lucio Sarno begins with a review of the seminal paper in this literature, describing the baseline model proposed therein. He then covers a number of variants and generalizations of the baseline model involving the allowance for nominal rigidities, pricing to market, alternative preference specifications, and alternative financial markets structures. The author also discusses the recent stochastic extensions of these models, especially focusing on their implications for ...
Working Paper
The efficient market hypothesis and identification in structural VARs
Structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models are commonly used to investigate the effect of structural shocks on economic variables. The identifying restrictions imposed in many of these exercises have been criticized in the literature. This paper extends this literature by showing that if the SVAR includes one or more variables that are efficient in the strong form of the efficient market hypothesis, the identifying restrictions frequently imposed in SVARs cannot be satisfied. We argue that our analysis will likely apply to VARs that include variables that are consistent with the weaker ...
Working Paper
The expectation hypothesis of the term structure of very short-term rates: statistical tests and economic value
This paper re-examines the validity of the Expectation Hypothesis (EH) of the term structure of US repo rates ranging in maturity from overnight to three months. We extend the work of Longstaff (2000a) in two directions: (i) we implement statistical tests designed to increase test power in this context; (ii) more importantly, we assess the economic value of departures from the EH based on criteria of profitability and economic significance in the context of a simple trading strategy. The EH is rejected throughout the term structure examined on the basis of the statistical tests. However, the ...