We show analytically that in a rational expectations present-value model, an asset price manifests near-random walk behavior if fundamentals are I(1) and the factor for discounting future fundamentals is near one. We argue that this result helps explain the well-known puzzle that fundamental...

Standard economic models hold that exchange rates are influenced by fundamental variables such as relative money supplies, outputs, inflation rates and interest rates. Nonetheless, it has been well documented that such variables little help predict changes in floating exchange rates - that is,...

Nominal exchange rates in low-inflation advanced countries are nearly random walks. Engel and West (2003a) offer an explanation for this in the context of models in which the exchange rate is determined as the discounted sum of current and expected future fundamentals. Engel and West show that...

This paper investigates the ability of a representative agent model with time separable utility to explain the mean vector and the covariance matrix of the risk free interest rate and the return to leveraged equity in the stock market. The paper generalizes the standard calibration methodology...

Recent empirical studies have found that stock returns contain substantial negative serial correlation at long horizons. We examine this finding with a series of Monte Carlo simulations in order to demonstrate that it is consistent with an equilibrium model of asset pricing. When investors...

This paper analyzes the economic determinants of developing country creditworthiness indicators for over 60 developing countries for the period from 1980 to 1993. Our results indicate that economic fundamentals--the ratio of non-gold foreign exchange reserves to imports, the ratio of the current...

This study examines the relative importance of political and economic variables in the determination of a country`s standing in credit ratings provided by commercial rating agencies. It finds that creditworthiness appears to be determined primarily by economic variables. While including...

This paper develops a view of exchange rate policy as a trade-off between the desire to smooth fluctuations in real exchange rates so as to reduce distortions in consumption allocations, and the need to allow flexibility in the nominal exchange rate so as to facilitate terms of trade adjustment....

We propose and implement a Wald test of the international capital asset pricing model. Ex post asset returns are regressed on asset supplies. CAPM requires that the matrix of coefficients from a regression of n rates of return on n asset supply shares be proportional to the covariance matrix of...

This paper builds a model of adjustment toward PPP for a panel of real exchange rates. The model eliminates some inconsistencies in previous models, which implied a model for the real exchange rate of country B relative to country C that was not commensurate with the posited model of the real...