Confronted with a speculative attack on its currency peg, an authority weighs the short-term benefit of giving in and fine tuning the economy against the long-term benefit of credibility-enhancing resistance. In turn, speculators with heterogeneous beliefs face strategic uncertainty that peaks...

This feature argues that a combination of factors caused the surprising US dollar appreciation in the second half of 2008. Both the global flight to safety into US Treasury bills and the reversal of carry trades amidst the crisis were sources of dollar strength. In addition, the surge in dollar...