Les économistes sont-ils chartistes ou fondamentalistes ? Une enquête auprès de 80 chercheurs français

Surveys of market participants are now widely used in the exchange-rate literature. However, there is no study of academics’views on exchange-rate dynamics. Our paper aims to fill this gap. We conducted a survey of 80 economists in several French universities in November 2002. Most respondents do not perceive economic fundamentals as important determinants of exchange rates at short and medium horizons. In particular, PPP is not regarded as a useful concept for predicting exchange-rate movements. The consistency between these beliefs and those of foreign-exchange traders disproves conventional wisdom, which sees a wide gap between the academic view and market traders’ everyday practices.