The carry trade is the investment strategy of going long in high-yield target currencies and short in low-yield funding currencies. Recently, this naive trade has seen very high returns for long periods, followed by large crash losses after large depreciations of the target currencies. Based on...

We provide an overview of the important events of the recent global financial crisis and their implications for exchange rates and market dynamics. Our goal is to catalogue all that was truly of major importance in this episode. We also construct a quantitative measure of crises that allows for...

We study the effects of sterilized intervention operations executed on behalf of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) using tick-by-tick transaction data between 1985-95.We extend preliminary analysis conducted by Fischer and Zurlinden (1999) by matching these data with intra-day indicative exchange...

The empirical performance of macroeconomic exchange rate models is more than disappointing. This dismal result is also reflected in the forecasting capabilities of professional analysts: all in all, analysts are not in a position to beat naïve random walk forecasts. The root for this deficient...

The study analyses the characteristics of professional exchange rate forecasts for the €/US$ rate. The results indicate that the quality of forecasts produced by professional economists is rather poor and incompatible with the rational expectations hypothesis. This dismal result is according...

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, and after decades of relative neglect, the importance of the financial system and its episodic crises as drivers of macroeconomic outcomes has attracted fresh scrutiny from academics, policy makers, and practitioners. Theoretical advances are following a...

We examine global dynamics under learning in New Keynesian models with price level targeting that is subject to the zero lower bound. The role of forward guidance is analyzed under transparency about the policy rule. Properties of transparent and non-transparent regimes are compared to each...

This paper uses a New Keynesian framework to study the coordination of fiscal and monetary policies, in response to an inflation shock when the policymaker acts with commitment. We first show that, in the simplest New Keynesian model, fiscal policy plays no part in the optimal policy response,...

This paper studies a simple New-Keynesian model of fiscal and monetary policy coordination when the policymaker acts under commitment. With a New Keynesian Phillips curve it is optimal to control inflation only through the use of monetary policy. But, when price-setters use a Steinsson (2003)...

This paper reviews some of the most prominent asset price bubbles from the past 400 years and documents how central banks (or other institutions) reacted to those bubbles. The historical evidence suggests that the emergence of bubbles is often preceded or accompanied by an expansionary monetary...