This volume is a collection of classical and recent empirical studies of currency options and their implications for issues of exchange rate economics, such as exchange rate risk premium, volatility, market expectations, and credibility of exchange rate regimes. It contains applications on how to extract useful information from option market data for financial forecasting policy purposes. The subjects are discussed in a self-contained, user-friendly format, with introductory chapters on currency option theory and currency option markets. The book can be used as supplementary reading for graduate finance and international economics courses, as training material for central bank and regulatory authorities, or as a reference book for financial analysts.

This paper extends the Krugman target zone model by including a realignment mechanism. Various properties of that realignment mechanism are discussed. The movement of the exchange rate is governed both by a Wiener process on fundamental and by a Poisson jump process with endogenous realignment size. The realignment mechanism is such that (except in cases where a speculative attack occurs) no jump in fundamental is needed to accompany the jump in the exchange rate. A risk neutral valuation of currency options is constructed. Some properties of option values under realignment risk are illustrated by numerical results.

This paper develops a model for valuing options on a currency which is maintained within a band. The starting point of our model is the well known Krugman model for exchange-rate behavior within a target zone. Results from model runs provide insight into evidence reported by other authors of mispricing of currency options by extensions of the Black-Scholes model.

Inhaltsangabe:Zusammenfassung: Währungskrisen, wie die des Europäischen Währungssystems (EWS) 1992, können noch immer nur unzureichend vorausgesagt werden. Es wird jedoch anerkannt, dass die Glaubwürdigkeit eines jeden Währungssystems ausschließlich endogen bestimmt wird, d.h. durch Interaktion der einzelnen Akteure an den Wechselkursmärkten. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht, ob ein bestimmtes Glaubwürdigkeitsmaß, eingeführt von Avesani, Gallo und Salmon (1995), geeignet ist, die große EWS Krise 1992 vorauszusagen. Dabei handelt es sich um ein dynamisches Spiel, in dem die beiden Akteure (Zentralbank und Finanzmarkt) miteinander interagieren und damit die Glaubwürdigkeit des Systems aushandeln . Es wird gezeigt, dass o.g. Glaubwürdigkeitsmaß ein geeigneter Indikator für Währungskrisen darstellt, was empirisch anhand des französischen Francs, der italienischen Lira und des niederländischen Guldens nachgewiesen wird. Introduction: The objective of the present study is to present the literature of exchange rate target zones and to explore empirically the Avesani-Gallo-Salmon credibility measure for selected currencies belonging to the Exchange-Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS). In the past decade the empirical literature on real world target zones mushroomed considerably, but still, its overall significance in explaining strains in the relevant foreign exchange markets remains relatively low. In this context, I will explore whether the Avesani-Gallo-Salmon (1995) credibility measure demonstrates more power than earlier studies in the analysis of the 1992/3 EMS crisis. It is not my intention to pursue a normative analysis whether flexible or fixed exchange rates or intermediate regimes are superior to one another in terms of their economic implications. This question is beyond the scope of my analysis.1 Given that target zones are applied frequently in the real world, I purely want to figure out, whether their application is sensible on grounds of a firm commitment of the policy-makers. Exchange rate bands have been discussed widely after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System in 1973. Although experiences with the fixed exchange rate regime were disappointing in the 1960s, increased volatility and/or overshooting of the exchange rates in the 1970s let economists doubt the famous argument by Friedman (1953) that speculation would stabilize exchange rate movements in the floating system. McKinnon (1976) reckoned that [...]

A flexible instrument to insure against adverse exchange rate movements are options on foreign currency. Often a relatively simple foreign currency option valuation model is used to address issues related to the pricing and hedging of such options. The results of many empirical studies document that real-world foreign currency option premia deviate from those predicted by the baseline model. In the first part of the book, it is shown that a noise trader model can help to explain the observed mispricing of the baseline foreign currency option pricing model. In the second part of the book, it is studied how policymakers can exploit the pricing errors of the baseline model. In particular, it is examined how option pricing theory can be applied to assess the effectiveness of central bank interventions in the foreign exchange market. To this end, a model is constructed to analyze the effectiveness of the interventions conducted by the Deutsche Bundesbank during the Louvre period.

The topic of this book is the development of pricing formulae for European style derivatives on assets with mean-reverting behavior, especially commodity derivatives.

This paper analyzes long-term exchange rate modeling. The paper reviews the literature that tests for a unit root in real exchange rates and the closely related work on testing for a unit root in the residual from a regression of the nominal exchange rate on relative prices. It argues that the balance of evidence is supportive of the existence of some form of long-term exchange rate relationship. The paper highlights that the form of this relationship, however, does not accord exactly with a traditional representation of the long-term exchange rate.