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Can Oil Prices Forecast Exchange Rates?

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  • Domenico Ferraro
  • Kenneth S. Rogoff
  • Barbara Rossi

Abstract

This paper investigates whether oil prices have a reliable and stable out-of-sample relationship with the Canadian/U.S dollar nominal exchange rate. Despite state-of-the-art methodologies, we find little systematic relation between oil prices and the exchange rate at the monthly and quarterly frequencies. In contrast, the main contribution is to show the existence of a very short-term relationship at the daily frequency, which is rather robust and holds no matter whether we use contemporaneous (realized) or lagged oil prices in our regression. However, in the latter case the predictive ability is ephemeral, mostly appearing after instabilities have been appropriately taken into account

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  • Domenico Ferraro & Kenneth S. Rogoff & Barbara Rossi, 2012. "Can Oil Prices Forecast Exchange Rates?," NBER Working Papers 17998, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17998
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    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • F37 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Finance Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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