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.

Foreign exchange intervention (FXI) is a highly debated topic. Yet, comprehensive and comparable data on FXI is hard to find. This paper provides a new dataset of FXI covering a large number of countries over the period 2000-20 at monthly and quarterly frequencies. It includes publicly available data for about 40 countries and carefully constructed proxies for 122 countries. Proxies are focused on both spot and derivative transactions that alter the central bank’s foreign currency position and account for a wide range of central bank operations, including vis-à-vis residents, the first proxy to do so to our knowledge. The paper discusses the merits of the new proxy relative to coarser measures traditionally used like the change in reserves, and potential definitional differences with published data. The paper also presents stylized facts using our newly constructed FXI proxies.

We study the effect of foreign exchange intervention on the exchange rate relying on an instrumental-variables panel approach. We find robust evidence that intervention affects the level of the exchange rate in an economically meaningful way. A purchase of foreign currency of 1 percentage point of GDP causes a depreciation of the nominal and real exchange rates in the ranges of [1.7-2.0] percent and [1.4-1.7] percent respectively. The effects are found to be quite persistent. The paper also explores possible asymmetric effects, and whether effectiveness depends on the depth of domestic financial markets.

This book focuses on the conduct of exchange rate and monetary policies in the Pacific Basin.

Foreign exchange intervention is frequently being used by central banks in countries which have a floating exchange rate. Most theoretical monetary policy models, however, do not take this phenomenon into account. This book contributes to close this gap between theory and practice by interpreting foreign exchange intervention as an additional monetary policy instrument for inflation targeting central banks. In-depth empirical analyses of the foreign exchange operations and interest rate policy of five inflation targeting countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom) demonstrate how foreign exchange intervention is used in practice.

Hikes in U.S. interest rates in 1999-2000 have started to spill over to other economies' interest rates, which in many countries have risen to reflect the higher U.S. rates. Are countries with flexible exchange rates better able to isolate their domestic interest rates from this type of negative international shock? Less and less so, as economies become more integrated.