Puzzle In International Finance Research Articles

Oil Strikes Back: Trend Factors and Exchange Rates

AbstractA well‐known puzzle in international finance is that, to predict exchange rate returns, existing predictive models often perform worse than the naive random walk (RW) model. In this paper, we construct an oil trend factor which performs better than the RW model. More importantly, an oil‐trend‐based dynamic trading strategy can generate superior economic values. This result holds in both developed and emerging markets, with different forecasting horizons, with different specifications of trend factors, and across different currencies. Finally, we explore the economic link for the powerful predictability of the oil trend factor.

What explains equity home bias? Theory and evidence at the sector level

This paper examines the well-known equity home bias puzzle in international finance by exploiting the cross-sector variation. Combining unique financial datasets, I introduce a novel sectoral home bias index that covers 27 industries in 43 countries, which enables empirical and theoretical analysis of the puzzle in unprecedented detail. I uncover two stylized facts (1) sectoral home bias is stronger for nontradable sectors and in countries with a higher degree of capital restrictions, and (2) investors tilt portfolios more towards domestic assets for the sectors in which their countries reveal a comparative advantage. Motivated by these findings, I build a multi-sector model that incorporates transaction costs, information asymmetry, and risk-hedging motives in investors’ portfolio choice. Moreover, I quantify the effects of these frictions on both sector- and country-level home bias in a calibrated DSGE model. This framework sheds light on the patterns and determinants of international financial investment.

Oil Strikes Back: Trend Factors and Exchange Rates

A well-known puzzle in international finance is that fluctuations in exchange rate are very difficult to predict and existing predictive models often perform worse than the naive random walk model. In this paper, we construct an oil trend factor and find that it performs better than the naive random walk in predicting exchange rates out-of-sample and delivers superior economic significance. This result holds in both developed and developing countries, with different forecasting horizons and with different specifications of trend factors. Notably, we also show that the predictive power of the oil trend factor is closely related to macroeconomic fundamentals.

Capital market liberalization: Optimal tradeoff and bargaining delay

Host and investing countries are faced with a tradeoff between growth and volatility arising from capital flows. The host country seeks capital inflows for high growth, yet worries about accompanying volatility so much that it limits capital market opening due to its financial weakness. However, the investing country solicits quick and safe returns from capital outflows by requesting wide foreign openness. It is often observed that one side’s push for opening encounters the other side’s reluctance. We examine how this conflict of interest is resolved for international compromise equilibrium through sequential bargaining between the two sides with private valuations of capital flows. We find that openness bargaining can end up with strategic delay after information revelation. This finding sheds light on certain puzzles in international finance.

Limited Stock Market Participation and Goods Market Frictions: A Potential Resolution for Puzzles in International Finance

The popular assumption based on complete markets that the log of real exchange rate growth equals the difference between the logs of home and foreign IMRSs imposes a tight restriction on explaining the joint behavior of asset prices, exchange rates, and international risk sharing. We study asset prices, exchange rates, and consumption dynamics in a general equilibrium two-country macro-finance model that features both asset-market and goods-market frictions. For the asset-market friction, we consider limited stock market participation a la Guvenen (2009). In addition, we follow Corsetti, Dedola, and Leduc (2008) to model frictions to international trade such as non-traded goods and distribution cost. We provide analysis of the model linearized to the second order, by implementing the method proposed by Devereux and Sutherland (2010) to overcome the indeterminacy issues with portfolio choice. The model generates a high price of risk, smooth exchange rates, and makes substantial progress towards explaining the empirically observed low consumption growth correlation between countries. We find that distribution cost plays a central role for reducing international consumption co-movement while also amplifying risk premia.

Spurious long memory, uncommon breaks and the implied–realized volatility puzzle

One of the puzzles in international finance is the frequent finding that implied volatility is a biased predictor of realized volatility. However, given asset price volatility is often characterized as possessing long memory, the recent literature has shown that allowing for long-range dependence removes this bias. Of course, the appearance of long memory can be generated by the presence of structural breaks. This paper discusses the effect of structural breaks on the implied–realized volatility relation. Simulations show that if significant structural breaks are omitted, testing can spuriously show the typical patterns of fractional cointegration found in the literature. Next, empirical results show that foreign exchange implied and realized volatility contains structural breaks. The breaks in the implied series never closely anticipate or co-occur with those of the realized series, suggesting that the market has no ability to forecast structural change. When breaks are accounted for in the bi-variate framework, the point estimate of the slope parameter falls and the null of unbiasedness can be rejected. Allowing for structural breaks suggests that the implied–realized volatility puzzle might not be solved after all.

Bid-ask spreads, deviations from PPP and the forward prediction error: The case of the British pound and the euro

Abstract One puzzle in international finance is the finding that the forward foreign exchange rate is a poor predictor of the future spot foreign exchange rate. It has been postulated that this finding could be explained by the presence of unobservable risk premiums. Theory, however, is silent as to the factors that proxy for these risk premiums. Thus, we examine spot and forward bid-ask spreads and deviations from relative PPP as potential proxies. We find statistically significant evidence that deviations from relative PPP are related to the forward prediction error for the British pound and the euro. Furthermore, when examining the British pound exchange rates with the currencies of developed countries, we find that the coefficients on the bid-ask spreads are significant for the entire period. The coefficients on the bid-ask spreads of euro exchange rates with the currencies of developed countries are significant during the period 1999–2007. The findings are robust with respect to several different terms of forward rates, the consideration of transactions costs by using bid and spot rates instead of midpoint rates, and controlling for possible asymmetry and non-linearity.

Asset liquidity and international portfolio choice

We study optimal portfolio choice in a two-country model where assets represent claims on future consumption and facilitate trade in markets with imperfect credit. Assuming that foreign assets trade at a cost, agents hold relatively more domestic assets. Consequently, agents have larger claims to domestic over foreign consumption. Moreover, foreign assets turn over faster than domestic assets because the former have desirable liquidity properties, but represent inferior saving tools. Our mechanism offers an answer to a long-standing puzzle in international finance: a positive relationship between consumption and asset home bias coupled with higher turnover rates of foreign over domestic assets.

Large data sets, nonlinearity and the speed of adjustment to real exchange rate shocks

A well known puzzle in international finance concerns the very slow speeds of adjustment of real exchange rates observed in response to shocks. In this article, we explore whether allowing for a wide range of influences on the real exchange rate in a nonlinear framework can help resolve this puzzle. Using, recently proposed econometric methods for summarizing very large macroeconomic data sets into a small number of observable factors, we find that there is a long run relationship between these factors and real exchange rates. When put into a nonlinear framework, we find that allowing for the effects of macroeconomic factors dramatically increases the measured speed of adjustment of the real exchange rate.

Financial Education, Investor Protection and International Portfolio Diversification

This paper investigates the tension between regulation and financial education in explaining one of the major puzzles in international finance, that is the lack of international diversification. We show that both dimensions are relevant: higher investor’s financial education fosters international investment and stronger minority investor protection legislation attracts inward investment. More interestingly, these factors appear to be substitute in enhancing investor’s portfolio diversification: the role of financial education is particularly pronounced where information problems and monitoring costs are likely to be more severe, that is in countries where protection of minority shareholders’rights is weaker. We interpret this evidence as supportive of the conjecture that the main channel through which financial education contributes to international diversification consists of loosening the informational constraints binding foreign investors.

On the (in)feasibility of covered interest parity as a solution to the forward bias puzzle

This paper examines Pippenger's (2011) proposed solution to the forward bias puzzle, which is based on the covered interest parity (CIP) condition. It is argued that the CIP-based approach does not solve this well known and long-standing puzzle in international finance in a meaningful way. Moreover, it is shown that empirical results from such an approach follow mechanically from the identity-like nature of the theory of covered interest parity, which, aside from small deviations due to transaction costs, is assumed to hold in all periods (as if it were an identity). We show that rather than leading to new insights, the simple reconfiguration of CIP to solve for the time t + 1 spot exchange rate leads to tautological expressions that, when estimated, might appear to successfully explain the forward bias, but in actuality are trivial. Results from simple simulation exercises further illustrate the inconclusiveness of the proposed solution method.

Heterogeneity and Volatility Puzzles in International Finance

AbstractWe develop an equilibrium model in a 2-country, 2-good, pure exchange economy in which investors with logarithmic utility functions have heterogeneous beliefs about exogenously given output or endowment processes. We obtain closed-form representations of real exchange rates and of stock prices. We show that heterogeneous beliefs together with heterogeneous preferences make the volatility of real exchange rates and of stocks exhibit some properties that have been well documented in the empirical literature. These properties include the high volatility of both real exchange rates and stocks compared with that of economic fundamentals, the high correlation of stocks during periods of volatile markets. The model can also generate the clustering of the volatility of foreign exchange rates and stocks if the differences of beliefs are clustering.

Infrequent Portfolio Decisions: A Solution to the Forward Discount Puzzle

A major puzzle in international finance is that high interest rate currencies tend to appreciate (forward discount puzzle). Motivated by the fact that only a small fraction of foreign currency holdings is actively managed, we calibrate a two-country model in which agents make infrequent portfolio decisions. We show that the model can account for the forward discount puzzle. It can also account for several related empirical phenomena, including that of “delayed overshooting.” We also show that making infrequent portfolio decisions is optimal as the welfare gain from active currency management is smaller than the corresponding fees. (JEL F31, G11, G15)

The Forward Exchange Rate Bias Puzzle Is Persistent: Evidence from Stochastic and Nonparametric Cointegration Tests

AbstractAn important puzzle in international finance is the failure of the forward exchange rate to be a rational forecast of the future spot rate. We document that even after accounting for nonstationarity, nonnormality, and heteroskedasticity using parametric and nonparametric tests on data for over a quarter century, U.S. dollar forward rates for the major currencies (the British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, and the German mark) are generally not rational forecasts of future spot rates. These findings deepen the forward exchange rate bias puzzle, especially as these markets are the most liquid foreign exchange markets with very low trading costs.

Heterogeneity and Volatility Puzzles in International Finance

We develop an equilibrium model in a two-country, two-good, pure exchange economy in which investors with logarithmic utility functions have heterogeneous beliefs about exogenously given output or endowment processes. We obtain closed-form representations of real exchange rate and of stock prices. We show that heterogeneous beliefs, together with heterogeneous preferences make the volatility of real exchange rates and of stocks exhibit some properties that have been well documented in the empirical literature. These properties include the high volatility of both real exchange rates and stocks compared with that of economic fundamentals, the high correlation of stocks during periods of volatile markets. The model can also generate the clustering of the volatility of foreign exchange rate and stocks if the differences of beliefs are clustering.

Announcement effects on exchange rates

AbstractAn asset pricing model for exchange rate determination is presented, where technical analysis in currency trade is incorporated in the form of a moving average technique. As a result, the model has jmax+1 rational expectations equilibria (REE), where jmax is large, since jmax past exchange rates affect the current rate due to technical analysis. There is, however, a unique REE that is economically relevant, and focusing on this REE, it is shown that the exchange rate is much more sensitive to a change in money supply than when technical analysis is absent in currency trade. This result is important since it sheds light on the so‐called exchange rate disconnect puzzle in international finance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Endogenous asymmetric information and international equity home bias: The effects of portfolio size and information costs

Equity home bias is one of the major puzzles in international finance. This paper investigates the impact of asymmetric information on equity home bias in a rational expectation model where portfolio managers differ in their levels of initial portfolio size and information acquisition is endogenous. The model characterizes the information acquisition and investment decisions made by each portfolio manager, and the resulting equilibrium. We find that portfolio managers with larger portfolio size acquire information about the foreign asset; this is consistent with new evidence linking the degree of home bias across portfolio managers to portfolio size.

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The Forward Exchange Rate Bias Puzzle is Persistent: Evidence from Stochastic and Non Parametric Cointegration Tests

An important puzzle in international finance is the failure of the forward exchange rate to be a rational forecast of the future spot rate. It has often been suggested that this puzzle may be resolved by using better statistical procedures that correct for both non-stationarity and nonnormality in the data. We document that even after accounting for non-stationarity, nonnormality, and heteroscedasticity using parametric and non-parametric tests on data for over a quarter century, US dollar forward rates for horizons ranging from one to twelve months for the major currencies, the British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, and the German mark, are generally not rational forecasts of future spot rates. These findings of non-rationality in forward exchange rates for the major currencies continue to be puzzling especially as these foreign exchange markets are some of the most liquid asset markets with very low trading costs.

TESTING LONG‐HORIZON PREDICTIVE ABILITY WITH HIGH PERSISTENCE, AND THE MEESE–ROGOFF PUZZLE*

A well‐known puzzle in international finance is that a random walk predicts exchange rates better than economic models. I offer a potential explanation. When exchange rates and fundamentals are highly persistent, long‐horizon forecasts of economic models are biased by the estimation error. When this bias is big, a random walk will forecast better, even if the economic model is true. I propose a test for equal predictability in the presence of high persistence. It shows that the poor forecasting ability of economic models does not imply that the models are not good descriptions of the data.