Advanced Search

Why Money Announcements Move Interest Rates: An Answer from the Foreign Exchange Market

Contents:

Author Info

  • Charles Engel
  • Jeffrey A. Frankel

Abstract

On a Friday that the Fed announces a money supply greater than had been anticipated, interest rates move up in response. Why? One explanation is that the market perceives the fluctuation in the moneystock as an unintended deviation from the Fed's target growth rate that will be reversed in subsequent periods. The anticipation of this future tightening drives up interest rates today. A second explanation is that the market perceives the increase in the money supply as signalling a higher target growth rate. The expected future inflation rate rises,which is reflected in a higher nominal Interest rate.This paper offers grounds for choosing between the two possible explanations: evidence from the exchange market. Under the first explanation, anticipated future tightening, one would expect the dollar to appreciate against foreign currencies. Under the second explanation,expected inflation, one would expect it to depreciate. We render these claims more concrete by a formal model, a generalization of the Dornbusch overshooting model. Then we use the mark/dollar rate toanswer the question. We find a statistically significant tendency for the dollar to appreciate following positive money supply surprises.This supports the first explanation.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1049.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 1049.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: Oct 1984
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1049

Note: ITI IFM
Contact details of provider:
Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Phone: 617-868-3900
Email:
Web page: http://www.nber.org
More information through EDIRC

For corrections or technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Frankel, Jeffrey A, 1979. "On the Mark: A Theory of Floating Exchange Rates Based on Real Interest Differentials," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(4), pages 610-22, September.
  2. Frenkel, Jacob A, 1976. " A Monetary Approach to the Exchange Rate: Doctrinal Aspects and Empirical Evidence," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 78(2), pages 200-224.
  3. Granger, C W J, 1969. "Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 424-38, July.
  4. Dornbusch, Rudiger, 1976. "Expectations and Exchange Rate Dynamics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1161-76, December.
  5. Fama, Eugene F, 1975. "Short-Term Interest Rates as Predictors of Inflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 269-82, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
  1. Roley, V Vance & Walsh, Carl E, 1985. "Monetary Policy Regimes, Expected Inflation, and the Response of Interest Rates to Money Announcements," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 100(5), pages 1011-39, Supp..
  2. Terry Boulter & Celeste Ping Fern Tan, 2000. "The Short Run Impact of Scheduled Macroeconomic Announcements on the Australian Dollar during 1998," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 082, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
  3. Goldberg, M.D. & Frydman, R., 1993. "Empirical Exchange Rate Models and Shifts in the Co-Integrating Vector," Working Papers 93-41, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  4. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Gikas A. Hardouvelis, 1986. "Commodity Prices, Overshooting, Money Surprises, and Fed Credibility," NBER Working Papers 1121, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Richard Hartman & John H. Makin, 1982. "Inflation Uncertainty and Interest Rates: Theory and Empirical Tests," NBER Working Papers 0906, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Robert J. Shiller & John Y. Campbell & Kermit L. Schoenholtz, 1983. "Forward Rates and Future Policy: Interpreting the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 667, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
  7. John H. Makin & Vito Tanzi, 1983. "The Level and Volatility of Interest Rates in the United States: The Roles of Expected Inflation, Real Rates, and Taxes," NBER Working Papers 1167, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Rudiger Dornbusch, 1983. "Equilibrium and Disequilibrium Exchange Rates," NBER Working Papers 0983, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Goldberg, Michael D. & Frydman, Roman, 1991. "Re-examining the Empirical Performance of the Monetary Models of the Exchange Rate: A Problem of Structural Change," Working Papers 91-69, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  10. Charles Pigott, 1984. "Indicators of long-term real interest rates," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Win, pages 45-63.
  11. Andreas Fischer, 1989. "Interpreting the Term Structure of Interest Rates Using Weekly Money Announcements," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 125(I), pages 43-53, March.
  12. Robert G. King & Bharat Trehan, 1983. "The Implications of an Endogenous Money Supply for Monetary Neutrality," NBER Working Papers 1175, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1049

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.