This study of an important class of investors-U.S. mutual funds-finds that mutual funds do engage in momentum trading (buying winners and selling losers). They also engage in contagion trading strategies (selling assets from one country when asset prices fall in another).Kaminsky, Lyons, and...

International mutual funds are key contributors to the globalization of financial markets and one of the main sources of capital flows to emerging economies. Despite their importance in emerging markets, little is known about their investment allocation and strategies. This paper provides an...

This paper presents an exchange rate model of a new kind. Instead of relying exclusively on macroeconomic determinants, the model includes a determinant from the field of microstructure finance - order flow. Order flow is a determinant because it conveys information. This is a radically...

This paper tests the portfolio-balance approach to exchange rate determination in a new way. Past work on portfolio balance in foreign exchange falls into two groups: (1) tests using measures of asset supply and (2) tests using measures of central-bank asset demand. We address the demand side,...

This paper addresses the trading strategies of mutual funds in emerging markets. The data set we develop permits analysis of these strategies at the level of individual portfolios. Methodoloically, a novel feature is our disentangling the behavior of managers from that of underlying investors....

It is a common view that private information in the foreign exchange market does not exist. We provide evidence against this view. The evidence comes from the introduction of trading in Tokyo over the lunch hour. Lunch return variance doubles with the introduction of trading, which cannot be due...

This paper shows there is a tradeoff between the speed of revelation and risk sharing in markets organized like spot foreign exchange. We show this by examining the following question: Would risk-averse dealers prefer ex-ante that order flow were observable? We answer this question with the...

This paper introduces a transactions dataset to test microstructural hypotheses in the spot foreign exchange market. The dataset reflects all the trading activity of a dealer whose average daily volume is over $1 billion over the five-day sample. We use the data to test for effects of trading...

Intraday interest rates are zero. Consequently, a foreign exchange dealer can short a vulnerable currency in the morning, close this position in the afternoon, and never face an interest cost. This tactic might seem especially attractive in times of crisis, since it suggests an immunity to the...

This paper addresses currency competition from an information perspective. Transactions in traditional models do not convey information, so transaction costs -- the driver of competition outcomes -- are driven by market size. In our model transactions do convey information (consistent with...