IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rba/rbardp/rdp9307.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Explaining Forward Discount Bias: Is it Anchoring?

Author

Listed:
  • David W.R. Gruen

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

  • Marianne C. Gizycki

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

Abstract

Anchoring is a well-documented behaviour pattern. It occurs when agents form their expectations of an objective variable by only partially adjusting from some given starting value. We present a model of the foreign exchange market in which there are two types of traders: those who are fully rational and those whose expectations are anchored to the forward exchange rate. Under plausible conditions, a significant proportion of the anchored traders survive in the market in the long-run. The model explains both forward discount bias in the direction consistently observed in foreign exchange markets and the results of surveys of market participants’ exchange rate expectations.

Suggested Citation

  • David W.R. Gruen & Marianne C. Gizycki, 1993. "Explaining Forward Discount Bias: Is it Anchoring?," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9307, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp9307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/1993/pdf/rdp9307.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Campbell, John Y. & Clarida, Richard H., 1987. "The dollar and real interest rates," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 103-139, January.
    2. Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "Does the Stock Market Rationally Reflect Fundamental Values?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(3), pages 591-601, July.
    3. Wright, William F. & Anderson, Urton, 1989. "Effects of situation familiarity and financial incentives on use of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic for probability assessment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 68-82, August.
    4. De Long, J Bradford, et al, 1990. "Positive Feedback Investment Strategies and Destabilizing Rational Speculation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 379-395, June.
    5. N. Gregory Mankiw, 1985. "Small Menu Costs and Large Business Cycles: A Macroeconomic Model of Monopoly," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(2), pages 529-538.
    6. Fair, Ray C, 1987. "International Evidence on the Demand for Money," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 69(3), pages 473-480, August.
    7. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 1988. "Recent estimates of time-variation in the conditional variance and in the exchange risk premium," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 115-125, March.
    8. McCallum, Bennett T., 1994. "A reconsideration of the uncovered interest parity relationship," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 105-132, February.
    9. 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.
    10. Lyons, Richard K., 1990. "Whence exchange rate overshooting: Money stock or flow?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3-4), pages 369-384, November.
    11. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Richard Meese, 1987. "Are Exchange Rates Excessively Variable?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1987, Volume 2, pages 117-162, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Maurice Obstfeld, 1985. "Floating Exchange Rates: Experience and Prospects," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 16(2), pages 369-464.
    13. Richard H. Clarida & Mark P. Taylor, 1993. "The Term Structure of Forward Exchange Premia and the Forecastibility of Spot Exchange Rates: Correcting the Errors," NBER Working Papers 4442, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. John F. O. Bilson & Richard C. Marston, 1984. "Exchange Rate Theory and Practice," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bils84-1.
    15. Dornbusch, Rudiger, 1976. "Expectations and Exchange Rate Dynamics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1161-1176, December.
    16. John Y. Campbell & Albert S. Kyle, 1993. "Smart Money, Noise Trading and Stock Price Behaviour," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(1), pages 1-34.
    17. Akerlof, George A & Yellen, Janet L, 1985. "Can Small Deviations from Rationality Make Significant Differences to Economic Equilibria?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 708-720, September.
    18. Frankel, Jeffrey & Engel, Charles M., 1984. "Do asset-demand functions optimize over the mean and variance of real returns? A six-currency test," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 309-323, November.
    19. repec:bla:econom:v:55:y:1988:i:220:p:437-60 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. De Long, J Bradford & Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H & Waldmann, Robert J, 1991. "The Survival of Noise Traders in Financial Markets," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(1), pages 1-19, January.
    21. Engel, Charles, 1992. "On the foreign exchange risk premium in a general equilibrium model," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3-4), pages 305-319, May.
    22. Lewis, Karen K, 1989. "Changing Beliefs and Systematic Rational Forecast Errors with Evidence from Foreign Exchange," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 621-636, September.
    23. Baldwin, Richard, 1990. "Re-Interpreting the Failure of Foreign Exchange Market Efficiency Tests: Small Transaction Costs, Big Hysteresis Bands," CEPR Discussion Papers 407, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    24. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 1983. "Estimation of portfolio-balance functions that are mean-variance optimizing : The mark and the dollar," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 315-327, September.
    25. Cochrane, John H, 1989. "The Sensitivity of Tests of the Intertemporal Allocation of Consumption to Near-Rational Alternatives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 319-337, June.
    26. Frankel, Jeffrey A & Chinn, Menzie D, 1993. "Exchange Rate Expectations and the Risk Premium: Tests for a Cross Section of 17 Currencies," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(2), pages 136-144, June.
    27. Shinji Takagi, 1991. "Exchange Rate Expectations: A Survey of Survey Studies," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 38(1), pages 156-183, March.
    28. Krasker, William S., 1980. "The `peso problem' in testing the efficiency of forward exchange markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 269-276, April.
    29. Froot, Kenneth A & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Foreign Exchange," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 179-192, Summer.
    30. Ito, Takatoshi, 1990. "Foreign Exchange Rate Expectations: Micro Survey Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 434-449, June.
    31. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    32. Baillie, Richard T & Bollerslev, Tim, 2002. "The Message in Daily Exchange Rates: A Conditional-Variance Tale," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 60-68, January.
    33. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    34. Cumby, Robert E., 1988. "Is it risk? : Explaining deviations from uncovered interest parity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 279-299, September.
    35. Jeremy Smith & David W.R. Gruen, 1989. "A Random Walk Around the $A: Expectations, Risk, Interest Rates and Consequences for External Imbalance," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp8906, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    36. Paul R. Krugman, 1981. "Consumption Preferences, Asset Demands, and Distribution Effects in International Financial Markets," NBER Working Papers 0651, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    37. 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.
    38. Northcraft, Gregory B. & Neale, Margaret A., 1987. "Experts, amateurs, and real estate: An anchoring-and-adjustment perspective on property pricing decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 84-97, February.
    39. Rudiger Dornbusch, 1980. "Exchange Rate Economics: Where Do We Stand?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 11(1, Tenth ), pages 143-206.
    40. LeRoy, Stephen F & Porter, Richard D, 1981. "The Present-Value Relation: Tests Based on Implied Variance Bounds," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 555-574, May.
    41. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1985. "The Dazzling Dollar," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 16(1), pages 199-217.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Baryla Jr., Edward A. & Borghesi, Richard A. & Dare, William H. & Dennis, Steven A., 2007. "Learning, price formation and the early season bias in the NBA," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 155-164, September.
    2. Shiller, Robert J., 1999. "Human behavior and the efficiency of the financial system," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 1305-1340, Elsevier.
    3. Powell, Alan A., 2000. "From Dornbusch to Murphy: Stylized Monetary Dynamics of a Contemporary Macroeconometric Model," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 99-116, January.
    4. Malcolm Edey & John Romalis, 1996. "Issues in Modelling Monetary Policy," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9604, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    5. John A. Carlson & Christian M. Dahl & Carol L. Osler, 2008. "Short-run Exchange-rate Dynamics: Theory And Evidence," Working Papers 39, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.

    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. 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.
    2. David W. R. Gruen & Gordon D. Menzies, 1995. "Forward Discount Bias: Is it Near‐Rationality in the Foreign Exchange Market?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 71(2), pages 157-166, June.
    3. David W.R. Gruen & Gordon D. Menzies, 1991. "The Failure of Uncovered Interest Parity: Is it Near-rationality in the Foreign Exchange Market?," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9103, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    4. Norman C. Miller, 2014. "Exchange Rate Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14981.
    5. 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.
    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. 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.
    8. Alison Tarditi & Gordon Menzies, 1991. "Monthly Movements in the Australian Dollar and Real Short-term Interest Differentials: An Application of the Kalman Filter," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9111, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    9. Lucio Sarno, 2005. "Viewpoint: Towards a solution to the puzzles in exchange rate economics: where do we stand?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(3), pages 673-708, August.
    10. Menzies Gordon Douglas & Zizzo Daniel John, 2009. "Inferential Expectations," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-27, December.
    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. David W. R. Gruen & Jeremy Smith, 1994. "Excess Returns in a Small Open Economy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 70(211), pages 381-396, December.
    13. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    14. Richard H. Clarida & Mark P. Taylor, 1997. "The Term Structure Of Forward Exchange Premiums And The Forecastability Of Spot Exchange Rates: Correcting The Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(3), pages 353-361, August.
    15. Stuart Landon & Constance E. Smith, 2003. "The Risk Premium, Exchange Rate Expectations, and the Forward Exchange Rate: Estimates for the Yen–Dollar Rate," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 144-158, February.
    16. Meredith Beechey & David Gruen & James Vickery, 2000. "The Efficient Market Hypothesis: A Survey," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2000-01, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    17. 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.
    18. Mark, Nelson C & Wu, Yangru, 1998. "Rethinking Deviations from Uncovered Interest Parity: The Role of Covariance Risk and Noise," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(451), pages 1686-1706, November.
    19. Hommes, Cars H., 2006. "Heterogeneous Agent Models in Economics and Finance," Handbook of Computational Economics, in: Leigh Tesfatsion & Kenneth L. Judd (ed.), Handbook of Computational Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 23, pages 1109-1186, Elsevier.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    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:rba:rbardp:rdp9307. 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: Paula Drew (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rbagvau.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.