Exhange - Rate Determination

10 important questions on Exhange - Rate Determination

What Determines Exchange Rates?

· Factors that cause the supply and demand schedules of currencies to change:
o Market fundamentals (economic variables)
o Productivity, inflation rates, real interest rates, consumer preferences, and government trade policy
· Market expectations:
o News about future market fundamentals
o Traders’ opinions about future exchange rates.

Factors affecting exchange rates:

· Short term: transfers of assets (a few days / weeks): o Differences in real interest rates and to the shifting expectations of future exchange rates.
· Interim: cyclical factors (several months):
o Fluctuations in economic activity.
· Long term: flows of goods, services, and investment capital (0ne / two or more years):
o Inflation rates, investment profitability, consumer tastes, productivity, and government trade policy.

Determining Long-Term Exchange Rates?

· Exchange rate changes
· Reactions of traders in the foreign-exchange market to changes in
o Relative price levels
o Relative productivity levels
o Consumer preferences for domestic or foreign goods
Trade barriers
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Inflation Rates, Purchasing Power Parity and Long-Term Exchange Rates:

· Law of one price
· Identical goods should be sold everywhere at the same price
o When converted to a common currency
o Assuming that it is costless to ship the good between nations, there are no barriers to trade, and markets are competitive
· Prevailing market-exchange rate is the true equilibrium rate.

The Big Mac Index:

· An attempt to measure the true equilibrium value of a currency based on one product, a Big Mac
· Can be used to determine the extent to which the market exchange rate differs from the true equilibrium exchange rate.

Inflation Rates, Purchasing Power Parity and Long-Term Exchange Rates:
Example:

Price US0 = 100         | Price US1 = 200
Price CH0 = 100         | Price CH1 = 100
Exchange rate = S0 = $0.50/ CHF1
Determining the new exchange rate:
S1 = $0.50 [(200/100) / (100/100)] =
     = $0.50 X 2 = $1.00/CHF
Thus the dollar will have to depreciate by 100%.

Determining Short-Term Exchange Rates: The Asset-Market Approach:

· Foreign-exchange market activity:
o Dominated by investors in assets
o Treasury securities, corporate bonds, bank accounts, stocks, and real property.
· Asset-market approach:
o Investors deciding between domestic and foreign investments
o Relative levels of interest rates
o Expected changes in the exchange rate itself over the term of the investment.

Purchasing-power-parity theory

· Changes in relative national price levels:
o Determine changes in exchange rates, long term.
· A currency is expected to depreciate:
o By an amount equal to the excess of domestic inflation over foreign inflation.
· A currency is expected to appreciate:
o By an amount equal to the excess of foreign inflation over domestic inflation.

Level of the nominal (money) interest rate:

· A first approximation of the rate of return on assets that can be earned in a particular country
· Differences in the level of nominal interest rates between economies
· Likely to affect international investment flows
· Investors seek the highest rate of return.

If interest rates in U.S. < interest rates abroad

o Decrease in the demand for dollars
Dollar depreciation

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