Does the Kiwi fly when the Kangaroo jumps? The effect of Australian macroeconomic news on the New Zealand dollar

We conduct an event study that examines how the New Zealand - US (NZ/US) and the Australia - US (AU/US) exchange rates responds to the release of Australian macroeconomic news including the CPI, GDP, trade balance, and monetary policy decisions. We use two different measures of the unanticipated component of the news announcements. First, we use the difference between the actual value of the data and a survey of market participants' expectations of that data announcement. Second, we use the immediate response of the AU/US exchange rate to the news announcement.Our study has three main conclusions: 1) We show that the effects of the macro news in one country can also transmit to another country via the non-bilateral exchange rate (probably in anticipation of future spill-over effects). 2) Combined with results that show that the AU/US exchange rate responds by very little to New Zealand news, the results suggest that the low variation in the New Zealand - Australia cross rate is because both currencies respond in a similar fashion to Australian (but not New Zealand) macroeconomic data. 3) We highlight the problems associated with the events studies in which the surprises are calculated from a market price and propose a new estimator that overcomes this problem.