The flotation of exchange rates in the early 1970s saw a significant increase in the importance of foreign exchange markets and in the interest shown in them. Apart from the consequent institutional changes, this period also witnessed a revolution in macroeconomic analysis and finance theory based on the concept of rational expectations. This book provides an integrated approach to recent developments in the understanding of foreign exchange markets. It begins by charting the institutional background and looks at the recent history of movements in some of the major exchange rates. The theoretical sections focus on the economic and finance theory of the asset market approach, the macroeconomic models developed from this approach, and on interest rate parity theory. The empirical chapters draw on the authors' own research from a high quality set of exchange rate and interest rate data. The statistical properties of exchange rates are analysed; the relationship between spot and forward rates is examined; and the modelling and impact of new information on the forward and spot relationship is considered. The final chapter is devoted to the estimation and testing of exchange rate models.

This book presents a critical review of the empirical literature that studies the efficiency of the forward and futures markets for foreign exchange. It provides a useful foundation for research in developing quantitative measures of risk and expected return in international finance.

This book presents an extensive survey of the theory and empirics of international parity conditions which are critical to our understanding of the linkages between world markets and the movement of interest and exchange rates across countries. The book falls into three parts dealing with the theory, methods of econometric testing and existing empirical evidence. Although it is intended to provide a consensus view on the subject, the authors also make some controversial propositions, particularly on the purchasing power parity conditions.

Neoclassical Finance provides a concise and powerful account of the underlying principles of modern finance, drawing on a generation of theoretical and empirical advances in the field. Stephen Ross developed the no arbitrage principle, tying asset pricing to the simple proposition that there are no free lunches in financial markets, and jointly with John Cox he developed the related concept of risk-neutral pricing. In this book Ross makes a strong case that these concepts are the fundamental pillars of modern finance and, in particular, of market efficiency. In an efficient market prices reflect the information possessed by the market and, as a consequence, trading schemes using commonly available information to beat the market are doomed to fail. By stark contrast, the currently popular stance offered by behavioral finance, fueled by a number of apparent anomalies in the financial markets, regards market prices as subject to the psychological whims of investors. But without any appeal to psychology, Ross shows that neoclassical theory provides a simple and rich explanation that resolves many of the anomalies on which behavioral finance has been fixated. Based on the inaugural Princeton Lectures in Finance, sponsored by the Bendheim Center for Finance of Princeton University, this elegant book represents a major contribution to the ongoing debate on market efficiency, and serves as a useful primer on the fundamentals of finance for both scholars and practitioners.

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.

For about three decades until the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Covered Interest Parity (CIP) appeared to hold quite closely—even as a broad macroeconomic relationship applying to daily or weekly data. Not only have CIP deviations significantly increased since the GFC, but potential macrofinancial drivers of the variation in CIP deviations have also become significant. The variation in CIP deviations seems to be associated with multiple factors, not only regulatory changes. Most of these do not display a uniform importance across currency pairs and time, and some are associated with possible temporary considerations (such as asynchronous monetary policy cycles).