Limits to Speculation and Nonlinearity in Deviations from Uncovered Interest Parity: Empirical Evidence and Implications for the Forward Bias Puzzle

Abstract

We examine empirically the hypothesis that limits to speculation in the foreign exchange market may induce nonlinearities in the spot-forward relationship and in the process driving the deviations from the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) condition. Our empirical results provide strong evidence of nonlinearities which are consistent with a model of deviations from UIP with two extreme regimes: one regime with persistent but tiny deviations from UIP, and another regime where UIP holds. In a battery of Monte Carlo experiments, we show that if the true data generating process of UIP deviations were of the nonlinear form we consider, estimation of conventional spot-forward regressions would generate the well known forward bias puzzle and the predictability of foreign exchange excess returns documented in the literature. In turn, these findings have implications for the economic significance of the statistical rejection of foreign exchange market efficiency.