Volatility regime-switching in European exchange rates prior to monetary unification

Bernd Wilfling

Journal of International Money and Finance, 2009, vol. 28, issue 2, 240-270

Abstract: Several theoretical models suggest that the mere announcement of entering a currency union in the future triggers instantaneous changes in exchange-rate volatility. First, this paper develops a Markov-switching framework by which, in fact, volatility regime-switching in foreign exchange rates can be detected for all currencies in the run-up to the European Monetary Union (EMU). Second, the paper attributes the currency-specific volatility regime-switches to decisive economic, institutional and political factors prior to EMU. All in all, the empirical results suggest that for future EMU accession countries volatility regime-switching models provide a useful tool for a broad range of financial applications (e.g. for the pricing of currency options or for the construction of EMU probability calculators).

Keywords: EMU; Exchange-rate; volatility; Markov-switching; volatility; modeling; EMU; uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261-5606(08)00120-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:28:y:2009:i:2:p:240-270

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Money and Finance is currently edited by J. R. Lothian

More articles in Journal of International Money and Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().