The Federal Reserve as an Informed Foreign Exchange Trader: 1973 - 1995

Michael Bordo, Owen Humpage and Anna Schwartz

No 17425, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: If official interventions convey private information useful for price discovery in foreign-exchange markets, then they should have value as a forecast of near-term exchange-rate movements. Using a set of standard criteria, we show that approximately 60 percent of all U.S. foreign-exchange interventions between 1973 and 1995 were successful in this sense. This percentage, however, is no better than random. U.S. intervention sales and purchases of foreign exchange were incapable of forecasting dollar appreciations or depreciations. U.S. interventions, however, were associated with more moderate dollar movements in a manner consistent with leaning against the wind, but only about 22 percent of all U.S. interventions conformed to this pattern. We also found that the larger the size of an intervention, the greater was its probability of success, although some interventions were inefficiently large. Other potential characteristics of intervention, notably coordination and secrecy, did not seem to influence our success rates.

JEL-codes: E52 E58 F31 N22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-ifn, nep-mac and nep-mon
Note: DAE ME
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Michael D. Bordo & Owen F. Humpage & Anna J. Schwartz, 2012. "The Federal Reserve as an Informed Foreign Exchange Trader: 1973–1995," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 8(1), pages 127-160, March.

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Journal Article: The Federal Reserve as an Informed Foreign Exchange Trader: 1973–1995 (2012)
Working Paper: The Federal Reserve as an informed foreign-exchange trader: 1973-1995 (2011)
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