IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednrp/9221.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Short-term speculators and the origins of near-random walk exchange rate behavior

Author

Abstract

This paper suggests that normal speculative activity could be a source of random-walk exchange rate behavior. Using a noise trader model to analyze very short-term exchange rate behavior, it shows that rational, risk-averse speculators will smooth the impact of shocks to exchange rate fundamentals. With sufficient speculative activity, an exchange rate could become statistically indistinguishable from a random walk, regardless of the generating processes of its fundamental determinants. ; This result may help resolve the apparent inconsistency between the observed behavior of floating exchange rates and the behavior predicted by existing theoretical models given the actual behavior of exchange rate fundamentals. The result also suggests that heavy speculative activity could cause exchange rates to be forecast better via random-walk than via structural models--even when structural forces are correctly identified. Finally, the paper provides an explanation for the observed extended response of exchange rates to sterilized intervention.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Carol L. Osler, 1992. "Short-term speculators and the origins of near-random walk exchange rate behavior," Research Paper 9221, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednrp:9221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. José Miguel Melo, 2011. "Estratégia Militar e Gestão de Activos: Uma Visão Heurística," Working Papers de Gestão (Management Working Papers) 01, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    2. Chatrath, Arjun & Adrangi, Bahram & Allender, Mary, 2001. "The impact of margins in futures markets: evidence from the gold and silver markets," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 279-294.
    3. Osler, C. L., 1998. "Short-term speculators and the puzzling behaviour of exchange rates," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 37-57, June.

    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:fip:fednrp:9221. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.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.