TY  - JOUR
AU  - Devereux,Michael B.
AU  - Engel,Charles
TI  - Expectations and Exchange Rate Policy
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12213
PY  - 2006
Y2  - May 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12213
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12213.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael B. Devereux
Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
997-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA
Tel: 604/822-2542
Fax: 604/822-5915
E-Mail: mbdevereux@gmail.com

Charles Engel
Department of Economics
University of Wisconsin
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI  53706-1393
Tel: 608/262-3697
Fax: 608/262-2033
E-Mail: cengel@ssc.wisc.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-05-15
AB  - Both empirical evidence and theoretical discussion have long emphasized the impact of %u201Cnews%u201D on exchange rates. In most exchange rate models, the exchange rate acts as an asset price, and as such responds to news about future returns on assets. But the exchange rate also plays a role in determining the relative price of non-durable goods when nominal goods prices are sticky. In this paper we argue that these two roles may conflict with one another. If news about future asset returns causes movements in current exchange rates, then when nominal prices are slow to adjust, this may cause changes in current relative goods prices that have no efficiency rationale. In this sense, anticipations of future shocks to fundamentals can cause current exchange rate misalignments. Friedman%u2019s (1953) case for unfettered flexible exchange rates is overturned when exchange rates are asset prices. We outline a series of models in which an optimal policy eliminates the effects of news  on exchange rates.
ER  -