IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tri/wpaper/1314.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rethinking What Survey Data has to Say about the Role of Risk and Irrationality in Currency Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Josh Stillwagon

    (Department of Economics, Trinity College)

Abstract

A number of studies have used survey data on traders' exchange rate forecasts to examine the role of risk and non-REH forecasting in accounting for excess returns in currency markets. This work re-examines those results using an alternative estimation technique, the Cointegrated VAR, which allows for better examination of non-stationarity in a multivariate framework. The results demonstrate the importance of focusing on the persistence of deviations from any found relationships. Consistent with some later studies, clear evidence of a time-varying risk premium is found, and REH is rejected for all three exchange rate samples examined (BP/USD, DM/USD, and JY/USD). The results strongly draw into question though the interpretation that this represents obvious irrationality. The relationship between the forecast error and interest rate differential is found to be non-stationary at very high significance levels, implying that the correlations are spurious and unstable over time, and individuals are not, in fact, mis-forecasting in a fixed manner relative to interest rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Josh Stillwagon, 2013. "Rethinking What Survey Data has to Say about the Role of Risk and Irrationality in Currency Markets," Working Papers 1314, Trinity College, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tri:wpaper:1314
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www3.trincoll.edu/repec/WorkingPapers2013/WP13-14.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2013
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fred G M C Nieuwland & Willem F C Verschoor & Christian C P Wolff, 1990. "EMS Exchange Rates," CEPR Financial Markets Paper 0002, European Science Foundation Network in Financial Markets, c/o C.E.P.R, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX..
    2. Lewis, Karen K., 1995. "Puzzles in international financial markets," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 37, pages 1913-1971, Elsevier.
    3. Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier & Tornell, Aaron, 2004. "Exchange rate puzzles and distorted beliefs," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 303-333, December.
    4. Engel, Charles, 1996. "The forward discount anomaly and the risk premium: A survey of recent evidence," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 123-192, June.
    5. Kenneth A. Froot & Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1989. "Forward Discount Bias: Is it an Exchange Risk Premium?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(1), pages 139-161.
    6. Cavaglia, Stefano & Verschoor, Willem F. C. & Wolff, Christian C. P., 1993. "Further evidence on exchange rate expectations," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 78-98, February.
    7. Craig Burnside & Bing Han & David Hirshleifer & Tracy Yue Wang, 2011. "Investor Overconfidence and the Forward Premium Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 523-558.
    8. Dominguez, Kathryn M., 1986. "Are foreign exchange forecasts rational? : New evidence from survey data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 277-281.
    9. Fama, Eugene F., 1984. "Forward and spot exchange rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 319-338, November.
    10. Juselius, Katarina, 2006. "The Cointegrated VAR Model: Methodology and Applications," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199285679.
    11. Froot, Kenneth A & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Foreign Exchange," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 179-192, Summer.
    12. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    13. Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2009. "Understanding the Forward Premium Puzzle: A Microstructure Approach," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 127-154, July.
    14. Nieuwland, Frederick G. M. C. & Verschoor, Willem F. C. & C.P. Wolff, Christian, 1998. "EMS exchange rate expectations and time-varying risk premia," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 351-355, September.
    15. MacDonald, Ronald & Torrance, T S, 1988. "On Risk, Rationality and Excessive Speculation in the Deutschmark-U.S. Dollar Exchange Market: Some Evidence Using Survey Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 50(2), pages 107-123, May.
    16. Chinn, Menzie & Frankel, Jeffrey, 1994. "Patterns in Exchange Rate Forecasts for Twenty-five Currencies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 26(4), pages 759-770, November.
    17. Verschoor, Willem F. C. & Wolff, Christian C. P., 2001. "Scandinavian forward discount bias risk premia," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 65-72, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Josh Stillwagon, 2014. "Reexamining what survey data say about currency risk and irrationality using the cointegrated VAR," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 34(3), pages 1631-1643.
    2. Josh Stillwagon, 2013. "The Excess Returns Puzzle in Currency Markets: Clues on Moving Forward," Working Papers 1313, Trinity College, Department of Economics.
    3. Ron Jongen & Willem F.C. Verschoor & Christian C.P. Wolff, 2008. "Foreign Exchange Rate Expectations: Survey And Synthesis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 140-165, February.
    4. Bacchetta, Philippe & Mertens, Elmar & van Wincoop, Eric, 2009. "Predictability in financial markets: What do survey expectations tell us?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 406-426, April.
    5. Han, Bing & Hirshleifer, David & Wang, Tracy Yue, 2005. "Investor Overconfidence and the Forward Discount Puzzle," Working Paper Series 2005-21, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    6. Juan Jose Echavarria & Mauricio Villamizar-Villegas, 2016. "Great expectations? evidence from Colombia’s exchange rate survey," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 25(1), pages 1-27, December.
    7. Cavusoglu, Nevin & Goldberg, Michael D. & Stillwagon, Josh, 2021. "Currency returns and downside risk: Debt, volatility, and the gap from benchmark values," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    8. Josh R. Stillwagon, 2015. "Can the Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model Account for Traders' Expected Currency Returns?," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(5), pages 1044-1069, November.
    9. Josh Stillwagon, 2013. "Are Risk Premia Related to Real Exchange Rate Swings? Survey Expectations and I(2) Trends," Working Papers 1318, Trinity College, Department of Economics.
    10. Nevin Cavusoglu & Michael D. Goldberg & Joshua Stillwagon, 2019. "New Evidence on the Portfolio Balance Approach to Currency Returns," Working Papers Series 89, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    11. Sarita Bunsupha, 2018. "Extrapolative Beliefs and Exchange Rate Markets," PIER Discussion Papers 84, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    12. Norman C. Miller, 2014. "Exchange Rate Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14981.
    13. Craig Burnside & Bing Han & David Hirshleifer & Tracy Yue Wang, 2011. "Investor Overconfidence and the Forward Premium Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 523-558.
    14. Verschoor, Willem F. C. & Wolff, Christian C. P., 2001. "Exchange risk premia, expectations formation and "news" in the Mexican peso/U.S. dollar forward exchange rate market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 157-174.
    15. Steve Furnagiev & Josh Stillwagon, 2015. "Subjective Currency Risk Premia and Deviations from Moving Averages," Working Papers 1506, Trinity College, Department of Economics.
    16. Frankel, Jeffrey & Poonawala, Jumana, 2010. "The forward market in emerging currencies: Less biased than in major currencies," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 585-598, April.
    17. Moran, Kevin & Nono, Simplice Aimé, 2018. "Gradual learning about shocks and the forward premium puzzle," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 79-100.
    18. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric van Wincoop, 2005. "Rational Inattention: A Solution to the Forward Discount Puzzle," FAME Research Paper Series rp156, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    19. Prat, Georges & Uctum, Remzi, 2013. "Modeling the horizon-dependent ex-ante risk premium in the foreign exchange market: Evidence from survey data," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 33-54.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Excess returns puzzle; survey data; risk premium; non-stationarity; irrationality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tri:wpaper:1314. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Miguel Ramirez (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edtrius.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.