Target Zone Interventions and Coordination of Expectations

Foreign exchange markets regularly display severe bubbles. This paper explores whether or not so-called target zone interventions are an effective tool for central banks to stabilize the exchange rate. We define such intervention operations as buying/selling an undervalued/overvalued currency when the distance between the exchange rate and its fundamental value exceeds a critical threshold value. On the basis of a non-linear empirical exchange rate model with chartists and fundamentalists, we find that target zone interventions not only have the power to reduce misalignments but also earn profits