Abstract: My dissertation studies models of exchange rate determination that are standard in all respects except that market participants have incomplete knowledge about the economic structure, and employ adaptive learning rules to learn about the economic environment. My work on introducing model uncertainty into standard models is motivated by the well documented fact that when the underlying economic environment is known and is common knowledge to market participants, models under rational expectations cannot account for such basic features of the data as the relative volatility between exchange rate and fundamentals or the predictability of future exchange rate returns by the deviation of the exchange rate from the fundamentals. I partly response to this problem to use an alternative view of expectations, adaptive expectations, which can be a reasonable way to form expectations when the environment is excessively complex. I find that the model under adaptive expectations performs better than rational expectations in explaining why the forward exchange rate as a predictor of the future spot rate generates a large bias, why the maximal depreciation of a currency upon an unexpected monetary shock occurs some periods after the initial shock. I consider a standard monetary model where market participants learn about the economic structure using adaptive learning rules. While market participants are assumed to know the functional form of the stochastic process that drives the fundamentals, they do not know the parameter values which they assess by least squares learning. Market participants must also contend with unannounced regime shifts in the fundamental process. I compare the predictions of the model under adaptive learning to those generated under standard rational expectations and under adaptive expectations. I find that the model under adaptive learning dominates the alternative specifications of expectations in its ability to account for why the fundamentals predict exchange rate returns over long horizons, for generating exchange rate return volatility in excess of fundamentals volatility, and in generating persistent deviations of the exchange rate from the fundamentals. I conclude that the underlying model uncertainty goes far in helping to resolve some longstanding puzzles in the foreign exchange market.

A crucial challenge for economists is figuring out how people interpret the world and form expectations that will likely influence their economic activity. Inflation, asset prices, exchange rates, investment, and consumption are just some of the economic variables that are largely explained by expectations. Here George Evans and Seppo Honkapohja bring new explanatory power to a variety of expectation formation models by focusing on the learning factor. Whereas the rational expectations paradigm offers the prevailing method to determining expectations, it assumes very theoretical knowledge on the part of economic actors. Evans and Honkapohja contribute to a growing body of research positing that households and firms learn by making forecasts using observed data, updating their forecast rules over time in response to errors. This book is the first systematic development of the new statistical learning approach. Depending on the particular economic structure, the economy may converge to a standard rational-expectations or a "rational bubble" solution, or exhibit persistent learning dynamics. The learning approach also provides tools to assess the importance of new models with expectational indeterminacy, in which expectations are an independent cause of macroeconomic fluctuations. Moreover, learning dynamics provide a theory for the evolution of expectations and selection between alternative equilibria, with implications for business cycles, asset price volatility, and policy. This book provides an authoritative treatment of this emerging field, developing the analytical techniques in detail and using them to synthesize and extend existing research.

A comprehensive and in-depth look at exchange-rate dynamics Variations in the foreign exchange market influence all aspects of the world economy, and understanding these dynamics is one of the great challenges of international economics. This book provides a new, comprehensive, and in-depth examination of the standard theories and latest research in exchange-rate economics. Covering a vast swath of theoretical and empirical work, the book explores established theories of exchange-rate determination using macroeconomic fundamentals, and presents unique microbased approaches that combine the insights of microstructure models with the macroeconomic forces driving currency trading. Macroeconomic models have long assumed that agents—households, firms, financial institutions, and central banks—all have the same information about the structure of the economy and therefore hold the same expectations and uncertainties regarding foreign currency returns. Microbased models, however, look at how heterogeneous information influences the trading decisions of agents and becomes embedded in exchange rates. Replicating key features of actual currency markets, these microbased models generate a rich array of empirical predictions concerning trading patterns and exchange-rate dynamics that are strongly supported by data. The models also show how changing macroeconomic conditions exert an influence on short-term exchange-rate dynamics via their impact on currency trading. Designed for graduate courses in international macroeconomics, international finance, and finance, and as a go-to reference for researchers in international economics, Exchange-Rate Dynamics guides readers through a range of literature on exchange-rate determination, offering fresh insights for further reading and research. Comprehensive and in-depth examination of the latest research in exchange-rate economics Outlines theoretical and empirical research across the spectrum of modeling approaches Presents new results on the importance of currency trading in exchange-rate determination Provides new perspectives on long-standing puzzles in exchange-rate economics End-of-chapter questions cement key ideas

We propose a new explanation for the forward-premium and the delayed-overshooting puzzles. Both puzzles arise from a systematic under-reaction of short-term interest rate forecasts to current innovations. Accordingly, the forward premium is always a biased predictor of future depreciation; the bias can be so severe as to lead to negative coeffcients in the 'Fama' regression; delayed overshooting may or may not occur depending upon the persistence of interest rate innovations and the degree of under-reaction; lastly, for G-7 countries against the U.S., these puzzles can be rationalized for values of the model's parameters that match empirical estimates.

Interest rate expectations are essential for exchange rate determination. Using a unique Survey data set on interest rate forecasts from 1986 to 1995 for G7 countries, we find that interest rate shocks were significantly more persistent in sample than expected by the market. This is consistent with ff3's finding that changes in the forward rate reflect changes in exchange rate expectations. We then present a model of nominal exchange rate determination that rationalizes the forward discount puzzle and exhibits the delayed overshooting pattern found by ee: following a monetary expansion that reduces the domestic interest rate, there is a gradual depreciation of the exchange rate followed by a gradual appreciation several months later. Delayed overshooting results from (a) the interaction of learning about the current state of affairs, and the intrinsic dynamic response of interest rates to monetary shocks and (b) the discrepancy between the actual distribution of shocks in sample and its expectation by market participants. This discrepancy is consistent with rational expectations if either (a) there is a small sample or Peso problem or (b) the true structure of the economy evolves over time and agents are learning with some delay

Originally published in 1982. This book deals with exchange-rate determination and the implications of floating rate regimes for the time paths of prices and quantities. It develops a class of stochastic equilibrium models of the open economy operating under flexible exchange rates, assuming that agents are endowed with rational expectations but do not possess full current information as to the state of the world. Chapters look at a model’s response to economic disturbances, the effect on non-traded goods, and cyclical variations of the terms of trade. The final chapter considers a model to investigate purchasing parity issues.