Real exchange rate persistence : the case of the Swiss franc-US dollar rate

Asset prices tend to undergo wide swings around long-run equilibrium values, which can have detrimental effects on the real economy. To get a better understanding of how the financial sector and the real economy interact, this paper models the long swings in the Swiss franc-US dollar foreign currency market using the I(2) Cointegrated VAR model. The results show strong evidence of self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in the Swiss-US foreign exchange market that are consistent with the observed pronounced persistence in Swiss-US parity conditions. Generally, the results provide support for models allowing expectations formation in financial markets to be based on imperfect information.