This paper addresses the puzzle of regime-dependent volatility in foreign exchange. We extend the literature in two ways. First, our microstructural model provides a qualitatively new explanation for the puzzle. Second, we test implications of our model using Europe's recent shift to rigidly...

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...

Exchange rates depreciate by the difference between the domestic and foreign marginal utility growths. Exchange rates vary a lot , as much as 10% per year. However, equity premia imply that marginal utility growths vary much more, by at least 50% per year. This means that marginal utility...

This paper provides new perspective on the poor performance of exchange rate models by focusing on the information structure of FX trading. I present a new theoretical model of FX trading that emphasizes the role of incomplete and heterogeneous information. The model shows how an equilibrium...

We report findings from a survey of United States foreign exchange traders. Our results indicate that: (i) The share of customer business, versus interbank business, has remained fairly constant; (ii) The channels by which transactions take place have changed, as electronically-brokered...

Macroeconomic models of nominal exchange rates perform poorly. In sample, R2 statistics as high as 10 percent are rare. Out of sample, these models are typically out-forecast by a na‹ve random walk. This paper presents a model of a new kind. Instead of relying exclusively on macroeconomic...

The paper presents new empirical results that elucidate the dynamics of the foreign exchange market. The first half of the paper is an updated study of the exchange rate expectations held by market participants, as reflected in responses to surveys, and contains the following conclusions. First,...

Recent empirical work indicates that, in a variety of financial markets, both conditional expectations and conditional variances of returns are time- varying. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether these joint fluctuations of conditional first and second moments are consistent with...

Simple regression tests that have power against the alternatives that. asset prices and expected future asset returns are excessively volatile are developed and performed for the foreign exchange and stock markets. These tests have a number of advantages over alternative, variance hounds...