This paper presents a brief survey of the empirical literature on survey-based exchange rate expectations. The literature in general supports the presence of a non-zero risk premium and rejects the hypothesis of rational expectations. The crucial result is that, while short-run expectations tend to move away from some long-run “normal” values, long-run expectations tend to regress toward them. If this nature of short-run expectations increases the volatility of exchange rate movements, there may be a basis for some official measure to minimize short-run exchange rate movements.

The use of forward interest rates as a monetary policy indicator is demonstrated, using Sweden 1992-1994 as an example. The forward rates are interpreted as indicating market expectations of the time-path of future interest rates, future inflation rates, and future currency depreciation rates. They separate market expectations for the short-, medium-, and long-term more easily than the standard yield curve. Forward rates are estimated with an extended and more flexible version of Nelson and Siegel’s functional form.

This book collects together the basic documents of an approach to the theory and policy of the balance of payments developed in the 1970s. The approach marked a return to the historical traditions of international monetary theory after some thirty years of departure from them – a departure occasioned by the international collapse of the 1930s, the Keynesian Revolution and a long period of war and post-war reconstruction in which the international monetary system was fragmented by exchange controls, currency inconvertibility and controls over international trade and capital movements.

Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

This paper examines the dynamics of the foreign exchange market. The first half addresses a number of key questions regarding the forecasts of future exchange rates made by market participants, by means of updated estimates using survey data. Here we follow most of the theoretical and empirical literature in acting as if all market participants share the same expectation. The second half then addresses the possibility of heterogeneous expectations, particularly the distinction between “chartists” and “fundamentalists,” and the implications for trading in the foreign exchange market and for the formation of speculative bubbles.

''In summary, the book is valuable as a textbook both at the advanced undergraduate level and at the graduate level. It is also very useful for the economist who wants to be brought up-to-date on theoretical and empirical research on exchange rate behaviour.'' ""Journal of International Economics""

The paper models an adjustable peg exchange rate arrangement as a policy rule with an escape clause under which the timing and magnitudes of realignments are the outcomes of policy optimization decisions. Under the assumptions that market participants are rational, risk averse, and fully informed about the incentives of policymakers, the analysis focuses on the implications for relating realignment expectations to the state variables that enter the policy objective function, for modeling the bias in using forward exchange rates to predict future spot rates, and for characterizing the effectiveness of sterilized intervention.