IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Evaluating Foreign Exchange Market Intervention: Self-Selection, Counterfactuals and Average Treatment Effects

Author Info

  • Fatum, Rasmus
  • Hutchison, Michael M.

Abstract

Studies of central bank intervention are complicated by the fact that we typically observe intervention only during periods of turbulent exchange markets. Furthermore, entering the market during these particular periods is a conscious “self-selection†choice made by the intervening central bank. We estimate the “counterfactual†exchange rate movements that allow us to determine what would have occurred in the absence of intervention and we introduce the method of propensity score matching to the intervention literature in order to estimate the “average treatment effect†(ATE) of intervention. Specifically, we estimate the ATE for daily Bank of Japan intervention over the January 1999 to March 2004 period. This sample encompasses a remarkable variation in intervention frequencies as well as unprecedented frequent intervention towards the latter part of the period. We find that the effects of intervention vary dramatically and inversely with the frequency of intervention: Intervention is effective over the 1999 to 2002 period, ineffective during 2003 and counterproductive during the first quarter of 2004.

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.escholarship.org/uc/item/02c028gr.pdf;origin=repeccitec
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz in its series Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series with number qt02c028gr.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: 30 May 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt02c028gr
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Santa Cruz, CA 95064

Phone: (831) 459-2743
Fax: (831) 459-5077
Web page: http://www.escholarship.org/repec/ucscecon/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Foreign Exchange Intervention; Bank of Japan; Self-Selection; Matching Methods;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
  • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
  • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

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.:

as in new window
  1. Bhattacharya, Utpal & Weller, Paul, 1992. "The Advantage to Hiding One's Hand: Speculation and Central Bank Intervention in the Foreign Exchange Market," CEPR Discussion Papers 737, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Reuven Glick & Xueyan Guo & Michael M. Hutchison, 2005. "Currency crises, capital account liberalization, and selection bias," Working Paper Series 2004-15, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  3. Almekinders, G.J. & Eijffinger, S.C.W., 1996. "A friction model of daily Bundesbank and Federal Reserve intervention," Other publications TiSEM 9ca974cc-1549-4752-8dbe-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
  4. Rasmus Fatum & Michael Hutchison, 2003. "Effectiveness of Official Daily Foreign Exchange Market Intervention Operations in Japan," NBER Working Papers 9648, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-38, May.
  6. Guido W. Imbens, 2004. "Nonparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Under Exogeneity: A Review," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 4-29, February.
  7. Takatoshi Ito, 2002. "Is Foreign Exchange Intervention Effective?: The Japanese Experiences in the 1990s," NBER Working Papers 8914, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Fatum, Rasmus & Scholnick, Barry, 2006. "Do Exchange Rates Respond to Day-to-Day Changes in Monetary Policy Expectations When No Monetary Policy Changes Occur?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(6), pages 1641-1657, September.
  9. Torsten Persson, 2001. "Currency unions and trade: how large is the treatment effect?," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 16(33), pages 433-462, October.
  10. Christopher J. Neely, 2005. "An analysis of recent studies of the effect of foreign exchange intervention," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Nov, pages 685-718.
  11. Kearns, Jonathan & Rigobon, Roberto, 2005. "Identifying the efficacy of central bank interventions: evidence from Australia and Japan," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 31-48, May.
  12. Mark P. Taylor & Lucio Sarno, 2001. "Official Intervention in the Foreign Exchange Market: Is It Effective and, If So, How Does It Work?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(3), pages 839-868, September.
  13. Humpage, Owen F, 1999. "U.S. Intervention: Assessing the Probability of Success," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 31(4), pages 731-47, November.
  14. Taylor, Mark P, 2003. "Is Official Exchange Rate Intervention Effective?," CEPR Discussion Papers 3758, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  15. Rasmus Fatum & Michael M. Hutchison, 2004. "Foreign Exchange Intervention and Monetary Policy in Japan, 2003-04," EPRU Working Paper Series 05-05, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics, revised Jan 2005.
  16. Ho, W.-M.Wai-Ming, 2004. "The liquidity effects of foreign exchange intervention," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 179-208, May.
  17. Andreas M. Fischer, 2005. "On the Inadequacy of Newswire Reports for Empirical Research on Foreign Exchange Interventions," Working Papers 2005-02, Swiss National Bank.
  18. Reitz, Stefan & Taylor, Mark P., 2008. "The coordination channel of foreign exchange intervention: A nonlinear microstructural analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 55-76, January.
  19. Takatoshi Ito, 2005. "Interventions and Japanese Economic Recovery," Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series d05-100, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
  20. William P. Osterberg & Rebecca Wetmore Humes, 1993. "The inaccuracy of newspaper reports of U.S. foreign exchange intervention," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Q IV, pages 25-33.
  21. Owen F. Humpage, 2003. "Government intervention in the foreign exchange market," Working Paper 0315, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
  22. Heckman, James J, 1978. "Dummy Endogenous Variables in a Simultaneous Equation System," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(4), pages 931-59, July.
  23. Neely, Christopher J., 2008. "Central bank authorities' beliefs about foreign exchange intervention," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 1-25, February.
  24. Rasmus Fatum & Michael Hutchison, 2005. "Foreign exchange intervention and monetary policy in Japan, 2003–04," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 241-260, November.
  25. Ito, Takatoshi & Yabu, Tomoyoshi, 2007. "What prompts Japan to intervene in the Forex market? A new approach to a reaction function," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 193-212, March.
  26. Baillie, Richard T. & Osterberg, William P., 1997. "Why do central banks intervene?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 909-919, December.
  27. Edison, H.J., 1993. "The Effectiveness of Central-Bank Intervention: A Survey of the Litterature after 1982," Princeton Studies in International Economics 18, International Economics Section, Departement of Economics Princeton University,.
  28. Bonser-Neal, Catherine & Tanner, Glenn, 1996. "Central bank intervention and the volatility of foreign exchange rates: evidence from the options market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 853-878, December.
  29. Galati, Gabriele & Melick, William & Micu, Marian, 2005. "Foreign exchange market intervention and expectations: The yen/dollar exchange rate," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 982-1011, October.
  30. Vitale, Paolo, 1999. "Sterilised central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 245-267, December.
  31. Rasmus Fatum, 2002. "Post-Plaza intervention in the DEM/USD exchange rate," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 35(3), pages 556-567, August.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Fatum, Rasmus, 2015. "Foreign exchange intervention when interest rates are zero: Does the portfolio balance channel matter after all?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 185-199.
  2. Jaromir Benes & Andrew Berg & Rafael Portillo & David Vavra, 2015. "Modeling Sterilized Interventions and Balance Sheet Effects of Monetary Policy in a New-Keynesian Framework," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 81-108, February.
  3. Catalán-Herrera, Juan, 2016. "Foreign exchange market interventions under inflation targeting: The case of Guatemala," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 101-114.
  4. Radhika Pandey & Gurnain Pasricha & Ila Patnaik & Ajay Shah, 2015. "Motivations for Capital Controls and Their Effectiveness," Staff Working Papers 15-5, Bank of Canada.
  5. Hall, Stephen G. & Kenjegaliev, Amangeldi & Swamy, P.A.V.B. & Tavlas, George S., 2013. "Measuring currency pressures: The cases of the Japanese yen, the Chinese yuan, and the UK pound," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 1-20.
  6. Shinji Takagi & Hiroki Okada, 2013. "Central Bank Independence and the Signaling Effect of Intervention: A Preliminary Exploration," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 13-04, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP).
  7. Taro Esaka & Shinji Takagi, 2012. "Testing the Effectiveness of Market-Based Controls: Evidence from the Experience of Japan with Short-Term Capital Flows in the 1970s," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 12-03, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP).
  8. João Barata R. B. Barroso, 2014. "Realized Volatility as an Instrument to Official Intervention," Working Papers Series 363, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
  9. Mariko Hatase & Mototsugu Shintani & Tomoyoshi Yabu, 2013. "Great earthquakes, exchange rate volatility and government interventions," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 13-00007, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
  10. Fatum, Rasmus & Yamamoto, Yohei, 2014. "Large versus small foreign exchange interventions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 114-123.

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

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt02c028gr. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

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

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.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.