This book provides an alternative view of the workings of foreign exchange markets. The authors' modeling approach is based on the idea that agents use simple forecasting rules and switch to those rules that have been shown to be the most profitable in the past. This selection mechanism is based on trial and error and is probably the best possible strategy in an uncertain world, the authors contend. It creates a rich dynamic in the foreign exchange markets and can generate bubbles and crashes. Sensitivity to initial conditions is a pervasive force in De Grauwe and Grimaldi's model. It explains why large exchange-rate changes and volatility clustering occur. It also has important implications for understanding how the news affects the exchange rate. De Grauwe and Grimaldi conclude that news in fundamentals has an unpredictable effect on the exchange rate. Sometimes, they maintain, it alters the exchange rate considerably; at other times it has no effectwhatsoever. The authors also use their model to analyze the effects of official interventions in the foreign exchange market. They show that simple intervention rules of the "leaning-against-the-wind" variety can be effective in eliminating bubbles and crashes in the exchange rate. They further demonstrate how, quite paradoxically, by intervening in the foreign exchange market the central bank makes the market look more efficient. Clear and comprehensive, The Exchange Rate in a Behavioral Finance Framework is a must-have for analysts in foreign exchange markets as well as students of international finance and economics.

This book originated from a 2010 conference marking the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the landmark "Phelps volume," Microeconomic Foundations of Employment and Inflation Theory, a book that is often credited with pioneering the currently dominant approach to macroeconomic analysis. However, in their provocative introductory essay, Roman Frydman and Edmund Phelps argue that the vast majority of macroeconomic and finance models developed over the last four decades derailed, rather than built on, the Phelps volume's "microfoundations" approach. Whereas the contributors to the 1970 volume recognized the fundamental importance of according market participants' expectations an autonomous role, contemporary models rely on the rational expectations hypothesis (REH), which rules out such a role by design. The financial crisis that began in 2007, preceded by a spectacular boom and bust in asset prices that REH models implied could never happen, has spurred a quest for fresh approaches to macroeconomic analysis. While the alternatives to REH presented in Rethinking Expectations differ from the approach taken in the original Phelps volume, they are notable for returning to its major theme: understanding aggregate outcomes requires according expectations an autonomous role. In the introductory essay, Frydman and Phelps interpret the various efforts to reconstruct the field--some of which promise to chart its direction for decades to come. The contributors include Philippe Aghion, Sheila Dow, George W. Evans, Roger E. A. Farmer, Roman Frydman, Michael D. Goldberg, Roger Guesnerie, Seppo Honkapohja, Katarina Juselius, Enisse Kharroubi, Blake LeBaron, Edmund S. Phelps, John B. Taylor, Michael Woodford, and Gylfi Zoega.

The recent theory of exchange rate dynamics within a target zone holds that exchange rates under a currency bard are less responsive to fundamental shocks than exchange rates under a free float, provided that the intervention rules of the Central Bank(s) are common knowledge. These results are derived after having assumed a priori that excess volatility due to rational bubbles does not occur in the foreign exchange market. In this paper we consider instead a setup in which the existence of speculative behavior is a datum the Central Bank has to deal with. We show that the defense of the target zone in the presence of bubbles is viable if the Central Bank accommodates speculative attacks when the latter are consistent with the survival of the target zone itself and expectations are self-fulfilling. These results hold for a large class of exogenous and fundamental-dependent bubble processes. We show that the instantaneous volatility of exchange rates within a bard is not necessarily less than the volatility under free float and analyze the implications for interest rate differential dynamics.

In the last few decades exchange rate economics has seen a number of developments, with substantial contributions to both the theory and empirics of exchange rate determination. Important developments in econometrics and the increasingly large availability of high-quality data have also been responsible for stimulating the large amount of empirical work on exchange rates in this period. Nonetheless, while our understanding of exchange rates has significantly improved, a number of challenges and open questions remain in the exchange rate debate, enhanced by events including the launch of the Euro and the large number of recent currency crises. This volume provides a selective coverage of the literature on exchange rates, focusing on developments from within the last fifteen years. Clear explanations of theories are offered, alongside an appraisal of the literature and suggestions for further research and analysis.