Using ARIMA Forecasts to Explore the Efficiency of the Forward Reichsmark Market: Austria-Hungary, 1876-1914

John Komlos () and Marc Flandreau

Discussion Papers in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: We explore the efficiency of the forward Reichsmark market in Vienna between 1876 and 1914. We estimate ARIMA models of the spot exchange rate in order to forecast the one-month-ahead spot rate. In turn we compare these forecasts to the contemporaneous forward rate, i.e., the market's forecast of the future spot rate. We find that shortly after the introduction of a “shadow” gold standard in the mid-1890s the forward rate became a considerably better predictor of the future spot rate than during the prior flexible exchange rate regime. Between 1907 and 1914 forecast errors were between a half and one-fourth of their pre-1896 level. This implies that the Austro-Hungarian Bank's policy of defending the gold value of the currency was successful in improving the efficiency of the foreign exchange market.

Keywords: exchange rate; gold standard; ARIMA; efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F31 N23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ets
Date: 2006-11
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/8/1/0204_komlos.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Using ARIMA Forecasts to Explore the Efficiency of the Forward Reichsmark Market: Austria-Hungary, 1876-1914 (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenec:8

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics
Address: Ludwigstraße 28, D-80539 Munich, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Rainer Open-Rhein ().