Blowing against the Wind? A Narrative Approach to Central Bank Foreign Exchange Intervention

Alain Naef

Working papers from Banque de France

Abstract: Most countries in the world use foreign exchange interventions, but measuring the success of the policy is difficult. By using a narrative approach, I identify interventions when the central bank manages to reverse the exchange rate based on pure luck. I separate them from interventions when the central bank actually impacted the exchange rate. Because intervention records are daily aggregates, an intervention might appear to have changed the direction of the exchange rate, when it is more likely to have been caused by market news. This analysis allows to have a better understanding of how successful central bank operations really are. I use new daily data on Bank of England interventions in the 1980s and 1990s. Some studies find that interventions work in up to 80% of cases. Yet, by accounting for intraday market moving news, I find in adverse conditions, the Bank of England managed to influence the exchange rate only in 8% of cases. I use natural language processing to confirm the validity of the narrative approach. Using Lasso and a VAR analysis, I investigate what makes the Bank of England intervene during that period. I find that only movement on the Deutschmark and not US dollar exchange rate made the Bank intervene. Also, I find that interest rate hikes were mostly a tool for currency management and accompanied by large reserve sales.

Keywords: Intervention; Foreign Exchange; Natural Language Processing; Central Bank; Bank of England (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E5 F31 N14 N24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-his and nep-mon
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Related works:
Working Paper: Blowing against the Wind? A Narrative Approach to Central Bank Foreign Exchange Intervention (2022)
Working Paper: Blowing against the Wind? A Narrative Approach to Central Bank Foreign Exchange Intervention (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bfr:banfra:911

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