Conventional and unconventional approaches to exchange rate modeling and assessment

We examine the relative predictive power of the sticky price monetary model, uncovered interest parity, and a transformation of the net exports variable. In addition to bringing a new approach (utilizing our measure of external imbalance suggested by Gourinchas and Rey) and data spanning a more recent period to bear, we implement the Clark and West (forthcoming) procedure for testing the significance of out-of-sample forecasts. The interest rate parity relation holds better at long horizons and the net exports variable does well in predicting exchange rates at short horizons in-sample. In out-of-sample forecasts, we find evidence that uncovered interest parity outperforms a random walk at long horizons and that the measure of external imbalance does well at short horizons, although we cannot duplicate the findings of Gourinchas and Rey.