Parallel Market Premia and Misalignment of Official Exchange Rates

Due to restrictive foreign exchange policy and active parallel markets for foreign exchange in some developing countries, it is often believed that the real official exchange rate is undervalued (overvaluing the domestic currency). Since an overvalued domestic currency depress official current account below its equilibrium level, while an undervalued domestic currrency may be inflationary, it is important to be able to detect real official exchange rate misalignment as early as possible. This is difficult in economies where paparallel market for foreign currencies are well established and where it is therefore difficult to observe an underlying capital flows. We show that the direction of real official rate misalignment is identifiable without knowing the size of capital flow in the parallel market. We indicate that a change in the parallel market premium is an appropriate indicator of change in real official rate misalignment