We analyze the profitability of FX swaps used by the central bank of Brazil to shed light on the rationale for FX intervention. We find that swaps are profitable in expectation, suggesting that FX intervention is used to stabilize the exchange rate in the face of temporary excessive movements rather than to manipulate it away from fundamental values. In line with this interpretation, we find that the scale of FX intervention responds to the degree of exchange rate misalignment relative to UIP conditions. We also document that intervention is more aggressive when there is less uncertainty about the medium-term level of the exchange rate and when the exchange rate is overvalued rather than undervalued.

This paper presents a rule for foreign exchange interventions (FXI), designed to preserve financial stability in floating exchange rate arrangements. The FXI rule addresses a market failure: the absence of hedging solution for tail exchange rate risk in the market (i.e. high volatility). Market impairment or overshoot of exchange rate between two equilibria could generate high volatility and threaten financial stability due to unhedged exposure to exchange rate risk in the economy. The rule uses the concept of Value at Risk (VaR) to define FXI triggers. While it provides to the market a hedge against tail risk, the rule allows the exchange rate to smoothly adjust to new equilibria. In addition, the rule is budget neutral over the medium term, encourages a prudent risk management in the market, and is more resilient to speculative attacks than other rules, such as fixed-volatility rules. The empirical methodology is backtested on Banco Mexico’s FXIs data between 2008 and 2016.

The accumulation of large foreign asset positions by many central banks through sustained foreign exchange (FX) intervention has raised questions about its associated fiscal costs. This paper clarifies conceptual issues regarding how to measure these costs both from an ex-post and an ex-ante (relevant for decision making) perspective, and estimates both marginal and total costs for 73 countries over the period 2002-13. We find ex-ante marginal costs for the median emerging market economy (EME) in the inter-quartile range of 2-5.5 percent per year; while ex-ante total costs (of sustaining FX positions) in the range of 0.2-0.7 percent of GDP per year for light interveners and 0.3-1.2 percent of GDP per year for heavy interveners. These estimates indicate that fiscal costs of sustained FX intervention (via expanding central bank balance sheets) are not negligible.

This paper studies the relative effectiveness of foreign exchange intervention in spot and derivatives markets. We make use of Brazilian data where spot and non-deliverable futures based intervention have been used in tandem for more than a decade. The analysis finds evidence in favor of a significant link between both modes of intervention and the first two moments of the real/dollar exchange rate. As predicted by theory for the case of negligible convertibility risk, the impact of spot market intervention in our baseline sample is strikingly similar to that achieved through futures based intervention worth an equivalent amount in notional principal.

Since I first published Management of Foreign Exchange Risk (Lexington Books, 1978), financial innovation-spurred, in part, by exploding volatility in currency prices-has revolutionized the theory and praxis of foreign exchange risk management. Old-fashioned forward contracts have surrendered market share to currency swaps and options as well as to their perpetually multiplying derivatives. Interestingly, forex derivatives now provide a low cost and highly efficient method of transferring risk from the firms that are exposed to risk but which would rather not be (i. e. , risk-hedgers) to those which are not exposed but which-in exchange for a fee-would assume some exposure to risk (i. e. , risk bearers). Perhaps more importantly, foreign exchange risk management, which was once a fairly mechanical task confmed to the international treasury function, is now permeating global strategic management. Indeed, since the demise of the Bretton Woods system of pegged exchange rates, the cost of forex hedging instruments has fallen so dramatically that firms can readily avail themselves of hedging products which can reduce unwanted risk, thereby potentially gaining a competitive advantage over rivals that do not. Management and Control of Foreign Exchange Risk has grown out of a fundamental revision of my earlier work published almost 20 years ago. In the process, my thinking about risk and its mathematics has greatly benefitted from my association with John Cozzolino and Charles Tapiero.