IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/szg/worpap/0401.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Scapegoat Model of Exchange Rate Fluctuations

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Bacchetta

    (University of Lausanne, Studienzentrum Gerzensee and CEPR)

  • Eric van Wincoop

    (University of Virginia)

Abstract

While empirical evidence finds only a weak relationship between nominal exchange rates and macroeconomic fundamentals, forex markets participants often attribute exchange rate movements to a macroeconomic variable. The variables that matter, however, appear to change over time and some variable is typically taken as a scapegoat. For example, the current dollar weakness appears to be caused almost exclusively by the large current account de cit, while its previous strength was explained mainly by growth differentials. In this paper, we propose an explanation of this phenomenon in a simple monetary model of the exchange rate with noisy rational expectations, where investors have heterogeneous information on some structural parameter of the economy. In this context, there may be rational confusion about the true source of exchange rate fluctuations, so that if an unobservable variable a ects the exchange rate, investors may attribute this movement to some current macroeconomic fundamental. We show that this effect applies only to variables with large imbalances. The model thus implies that the impact of macroeconomic variables on the exchange rate changes over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Bacchetta & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "A Scapegoat Model of Exchange Rate Fluctuations," Working Papers 04.01, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
  • Handle: RePEc:szg:worpap:0401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.szgerzensee.ch/fileadmin/Dateien_Anwender/Dokumente/working_papers/wp-0401.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: None
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric Van Wincoop, 2006. "Can Information Heterogeneity Explain the Exchange Rate Determination Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 552-576, June.
    2. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Chinn, Menzie D. & Pascual, Antonio Garcia, 2005. "Empirical exchange rate models of the nineties: Are any fit to survive?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(7), pages 1150-1175, November.
    3. Olivier Jeanne & Andrew K. Rose, 2002. "Noise Trading and Exchange Rate Regimes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(2), pages 537-569.
    4. Franklin Allen & Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2006. "Beauty Contests and Iterated Expectations in Asset Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 719-752.
    5. Meese, Richard A. & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1983. "Empirical exchange rate models of the seventies : Do they fit out of sample?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1-2), pages 3-24, February.
    6. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Chinn, Menzie David, 2001. "Currency traders and exchange rate dynamics: a survey of the US market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 439-471, August.
    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. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric Van Wincoop, 2006. "Can Information Heterogeneity Explain the Exchange Rate Determination Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 552-576, June.
    2. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric van Wincoop & Toni Beutler, 2010. "Can Parameter Instability Explain the Meese-Rogoff Puzzle?," NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(1), pages 125-173.
    3. Dick, Christian D. & MacDonald, Ronald & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2015. "Exchange rate forecasts and expected fundamentals," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 235-256.
    4. Daniel L. Thornton, 2019. "Resolving the unbiasedness and forward premium puzzles," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(1), pages 5-27, February.
    5. Engel, Charles, 2014. "Exchange Rates and Interest Parity," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 453-522, Elsevier.
    6. Bacchetta, Philippe & van Wincoop, Eric, 2013. "On the unstable relationship between exchange rates and macroeconomic fundamentals," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 18-26.
    7. Menkhoff, Lukas & Rebitzky, Rafael R. & Schröder, Michael, 2009. "Heterogeneity in exchange rate expectations: Evidence on the chartist-fundamentalist approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 241-252, May.
    8. Aristidou, Chrystalleni & Lee, Kevin & Shields, Kalvinder, 2022. "Fundamentals, regimes and exchange rate forecasts: Insights from a meta exchange rate model," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    9. Kouwenberg, Roy & Markiewicz, Agnieszka & Verhoeks, Ralph & Zwinkels, Remco C. J., 2017. "Model Uncertainty and Exchange Rate Forecasting," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 341-363, February.
    10. Jordà, Òscar & Taylor, Alan M., 2012. "The carry trade and fundamentals: Nothing to fear but FEER itself," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 74-90.
    11. Ledenyov, Dimitri O. & Ledenyov, Viktor O., 2015. "Wave function method to forecast foreign currencies exchange rates at ultra high frequency electronic trading in foreign currencies exchange markets," MPRA Paper 67470, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Oscar Jorda, 2010. "Carry Trade," Working Papers 196, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    13. Ryan Chahrour & Vito Cormun & Pierre De Leo & Pablo Guerron-Quintana & Rosen Valchev, 2021. "Exchange Rate Disconnect Revisited," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 1041, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 12 May 2023.
    14. Eric Hillebrand & Jakob Mikkelsen & Lars Spreng & Giovanni Urga, 2020. "Exchange Rates and Macroeconomic Fundamentals: Evidence of Instabilities from Time-Varying Factor Loadings," CREATES Research Papers 2020-19, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    15. Agnieszka P. Markiewicz & Ralph C. Verhoeks & Willem F. C. Verschoor & Remco C. J. Zwinkels, 2023. "Inattentive Search for Currency Fundamentals," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(4), pages 907-952, December.
    16. F. Pancotto & G. Pignataro & D. Raggi, 2014. "Higher order beliefs and the dynamics of exchange rates," Working Papers wp957, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    17. Rime, Dagfinn & Sarno, Lucio & Sojli, Elvira, 2010. "Exchange rate forecasting, order flow and macroeconomic information," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 72-88, January.
    18. Jacob Gyntelberg & Mico Loretan & Tientip Subhanij & Eric Chan, 2010. "Private information, stock markets, and exchange rates," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), The international financial crisis and policy challenges in Asia and the Pacific, volume 52, pages 186-210, Bank for International Settlements.
    19. Candian, Giacomo, 2019. "Information frictions and real exchange rate dynamics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 189-205.
    20. Vygodina, Anna V. & Zorn, Thomas S. & DeFusco, Richard, 2008. "Asymmetry in the effects of economic fundamentals on rising and falling exchange rates," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 728-746, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General

    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:szg:worpap:0401. 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: library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://szgerzensee.ch/ .

    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.