This paper describes and analyzes “automated intervention” of a target zone. Unusually detailed information about the order book allows studying intervention effects in a microstructure approach. We find in our sample that intervention increases exchange rate volatility (and spread) for the...

This study shows that order flow in a foreign exchange market appears to have permanent price impact only if it comes from certain regions. These regions are - as predicted by the local information hypothesis - centers of political and financial decision making. It is revealing that orders from...

This paper describes and analyzes the implementation of a crawling exchange rate band on an electronic trading platform. The placement of limit orders at the central bank's target rate serves as a credible policy statement that may coordinate beliefs of market participants. We find for our...

We show empirically that survey-based measures of expected inflation are significant and strong predictors of future aggregate stock returns in several industrialized countries both in-sample and out-of-sample. By empirically discriminating between competing sources of this return predictability...

A sizeable literature reports that financial market analysts and forecasters herd for reputational reasons. Using new data from a large survey of professional forecasters' expectations about stock market movements, we find strong evidence that the expected average of all forecasters' forecasts...

We show empirically that survey-based measures of expected inflation are significant and strong predictors of future aggregate stock returns in several industrialized countries both in-sample and out-of-sample. By empirically discriminatingbetween competing sources of this return predictability...

We examine whether consumer confidence – as a proxy for individual investor sentiment –affects expected stock returns internationally in 18 industrialized countries. In line with recentevidence for the U.S., we find that sentiment negatively forecasts aggregate stock marketreturns on average...

Existing empirical evidence is inconclusive whether professional investors show moresophisticated behavior than individual investors. Therefore, we study two importantgroups of professional investors and compare them to laymen by way of a survey coveringabout 500 investors. We find that some...

Using a new data set on investor sentiment we show that institutional and individualsentiment proxy for smart money and noise trader risk, respectively. First, usingbias-adjusted long-horizon regressions, we document that institutional sentiment forecastsstock market returns at intermediate...

The puzzling evidence of seemingly high momentum returns is related to an understanding ofrisk as a simple covariance. If we consider, however, risk in higher-order statistical moments,momentum returns appear less advantageous.