At what level does a currency’s volatility become ‘excessive’, in a concrete sense? Any claim that an exchange rate is excessively volatile needs a benchmark for ‘normal’variability. We compute variance bounds implied by exchange rate models as the norm, for a set of...

We examine the high-frequency response of the rand-dollar nominal rate within ten-minute intervals around five minutes before, five minutes after) official inflation announcements, and show that the rand appreciates (respectively, depreciates) on impact when inflation is higher (respectively,...

This note combines a dynamic industrial organization model, in which an industry is subject to exogenous processes of market-size and collusion structure, with a consumption-based asset pricing model for the shares in the industry’s firms. Three main findings emerge for our model under the...

This paper revisits the currency crises model of Aghion, Bacchetta and Banerjee (2000, 2001, 2004), who show that if there exist nominal price rigidities and private sector credit constraints, and the credit multiplier depends on real interest rates, then the optimal monetary policy response to...

We examine the high-frequency response of the rand-dollar nominal rate within ten-minute intervals around five minutes before, five minutes after) official inflation announcements, and show that the rand appreciates (respectively, depreciates) on impact when inflation is higher (respectively,...

We analyze the returns to targeting the Australian, New Zealand, and South African currencies, through Japanese yen-funded speculation - with a particular focus on the South African rand, for which the carry trade is often seen as a source of exchange rate volatility. Targeting the rand through...

Short-term interest rate processes determine the term-structure of interest rates in an arbitrage-free market, and are central to the valuation of interest-rate derivatives. We obtain parameter estimates and compare the empirical fit of alternative one-factor continuous-time processes for the...