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Exchange rates and monetary policy

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Abstract

In this paper we confront the data with the financial-market folk wisdom that monetary policy is one of the key drivers of nominal exchange rates. Focusing on measures of conventional and unconventional monetary policy, we find that monetary policy surprises and changes in expectations about future monetary policy can explain a sizable fraction of the variation in exchange rate changes for certain currency pairs. However, our results show that expected excess returns account for most of this variation. We also find that the importance unconventional monetary policy plays for explaining exchange rate changes is larger in the period since the United States hit the zero lower bound in December 2008. In contrast, the importance of conventional monetary policy is lower during this period due to a decrease in the volatility of monetary policy surprises. Meanwhile, the marginal response of exchange rate changes relative to conventional policy surprises actually has strengthened due to a change in the relationship between these surprises and expected excess returns.

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  • Vania Stavrakeva & Jenny Tang, 2015. "Exchange rates and monetary policy," Working Papers 15-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:15-16
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    Cited by:

    1. N.R. Ramírez-Rondán & Marco E. Terrones, 2019. "Uncertainty and the Uncovered Interest Parity Condition: How Are They Related?," Working Papers 156, Peruvian Economic Association.
    2. Ferrari, Massimo & Kearns, Jonathan & Schrimpf, Andreas, 2021. "Monetary policy’s rising FX impact in the era of ultra-low rates," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    3. Michael Jetter & Alex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy & Olena Ogrokhina, 2019. "Can policy shifts explain the forward discount puzzle?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(6), pages 1891-1909, December.
    4. Philippe Mueller & Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi & Andrea Vedolin, 2017. "Exchange Rates and Monetary Policy Uncertainty," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(3), pages 1213-1252, June.
    5. Pinchetti, Marco & Szczepaniak, Andrzej, 2021. "Global spillovers of the Fed information effect," Bank of England working papers 952, Bank of England.
    6. Stephanie E. Curcuru & Steven B. Kamin & Canlin Li & Marius del Giudice Rodriguez, 2018. "International Spillovers of Monetary Policy : Conventional Policy vs. Quantitative Easing," International Finance Discussion Papers 1234, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Oleg Itskhoki & Dmitry Mukhin, 2021. "Exchange Rate Disconnect in General Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(8), pages 2183-2232.
    8. Gräb, Johannes & Kostka, Thomas, 2018. "Predicting risk premia in short-term interest rates and exchange rates," Working Paper Series 2131, European Central Bank.
    9. Ferdinand Dreher & Johannes Gräb & Thomas Kostka, 2020. "From carry trades to curvy trades," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 758-780, March.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

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