U.S. International Capital Flows: Perspectives From Rational Maximizing Models

This paper examines several aspects of the debate about the causes of the U.S. current account deficit in the 1980's. It surveys several popular explanations before developing two theoretical models of international capital flows. The first model is Ricardian, and it extends the analysis of Stockman and Svensson (1987): The second model is an overlapping generations framework. The major difference in predictions of these two models involves the effects of government budget deficits on the exchange rate and the current account. An update of the empirical investigation of Evans (1986) suggests that his VAR methodology is completely uninformative with additional data. Some empirical results on the importance of risk aversion in modeling international capital market equilibrium are also presented.

Money and the Open Economy Business Cycle: A Flexible Price Model

This paper develops an open-economy model of the business cycle. The nominal prices in the model are flexible and monetary nonneutrality is developed using information confusion about the sources of disturbances to demand coupled with differential persistence of demand shocks. Firms use inventories to smooth their production, and consumers follow a stochastic permanent income expenditure function. The major implication of the model is that unperceived monetary disturbances improve the terms of trade and increase real output in contrast to sticky price models in which the terms of trade deteriorates. This implication of the model is examined empirically.

Evaluating the Specification Errors of Asset Pricing Models

This paper examines the specification errors of several asset pricing models using the methodology of Hansen and Jagannathan (1997) and a common data set. The models are the CAPM, the Consumption CAPM, the Jagannathan and Wang (1996) conditional CAPM, the Campbell (1996) dynamic asset pricing model, the Cochrane (1996) production-based model, and the Fama-French (1993) three-factor and five-factor models. We use returns on the Fama-French twenty-five portfolios sorted by size and book-to-market ratio and the risk-free rate as our test assets. The sample is 1952 to 1997. We allow the parameters of the models' pricing kernels to fluctuate with the business cycle which we measure in two ways. One uses the Hodrick-Prescott (1997) filter applied to either industrial production for monthly models or real GNP for quarterly models. The second approach for quarterly models uses the consumption-wealth measure developed by Lettau and Ludvigson (1999). While we cannot reject correct pricing for Campbell's model, a stability test indicates that the parameters may not be stable. None of the models correctly prices returns that are scaled by the term premium.

Asset Price Volatility, Bubbles, and Process Switching

Evidence of excess volatilities of asset prices compared with those of market fundamentals is often attributed to speculative bubbles. This study examines the sense in which speculative bubbles could in theory lead to excess volatility, hut it demonstrates that some of the variance hounds evidence reported to date precludes bubbles as a reason why asset prices might violate such hounds. The findings must represent some other model misspecffication or market inefficiency. One important misspecification occurs when there searcher incorrectly specifies the time series properties of market fundamentals. A bubble-free example economy characterized by a potential switch in government policies produces paths of asset prices that would appear, to an unwary researcher, to contain bubbles.

Foreign Currency Futures

The theoretical nature of risk premiums in foreign currency futures markets is derived and studied empirically. Estimation problems encountered in using futures data are discussed. Since forward rates and futures prices are demonstrated to be approximately equal, and because risk premiums in forward markets are highly variable, consistency of the data requires time variation in daily risk premiums in the futures market. Unbiasedness of daily futures prices as predictors of the following day's futures price is rejected for all currencies. Reconciliation of daily and monthly data requires positive serial correlation in daily risk premiums.

Expectations Hypotheses Tests

We investigate the Expectations Hypotheses of the term structure of interest rates and of the foreign exchange market using vector autoregressive methods for the U.S. dollar, Deutsche mark, and British pound interest rates and exchange rates. In addition to standard Wald tests, we formulate Lagrange Multiplier and Distance Metric tests which require estimation under the non-linear constraints of the null hypotheses. Estimation under the null is achieved by iterating on approximate solutions that require only matrix inversions. We use a bias-corrected, constrained vector autoregression as a data generating process and construct extensive Monte Carlo simulations of the various test statistics under the null hypotheses. Wald tests suffer from severe size distortions and use of the asymptotic critical values results in gross over-rejection of the null. The Lagrange Multiplier tests slightly under-reject the null, and the Distance Metric tests over-reject. Use of the small sample distributions of the different tests leads to a common interpretation of the validity of the Expectations Hypotheses. The evidence against the Expectations Hypotheses for these interest rates and exchange rates is much less strong than under asymptotic inference.

An Investigation of Risk and Return in Forward Foreign Exchange

This paper examines the determination of risk premiums in foreign exchange markets. The statistical model is based on a theoretical model of asset pricing, which leads to severe cross-equation constraints. Statistical tests lead to a rejection of these constraints. We examine the robustness of these tests to time variation in parameters and to the presence of heteroskedasticity. We find that there is evidence for heteroskedasticity and that the conditional expectation of the risk premium is a nonlinear function of the forward premium. Accounting for this nonlinearity, the specification appears to be time invariant. Out of sample portfolio speculaton is profItable but risky.

The Covariation of Risk Premiums and Expected Future Spot Exchange Rates

Fama(1984) analyzed the variability and the covariation of risk premiums and expected rates of depreciation. We employ three statistical techniques that do not suffer from a potential bias in Fama's analysis, but we nevertheless confirm his findings. In contrast to his interpretation the results are not necessarily at variance with the predictions of a theoretical model of the risk premium. Increases in expected rates of depreciation of the dollar relative to five foreign currencies are positively correlated with increases in the expected profitability of purchasing these currencies in the forward market, and risk premiums have larger variances than expected rates of depreciation.

International stock return comovements

We examine international stock return comovements using country-industry and country-style portfolios as the base portfolios. We first establish that parsimonious risk-based factor models capture the covariance structure of the data better than the popular Heston- ouwenhorst (1994) model. We then establish the following stylized facts regarding stock return comovements. First, we do not find evidence for an upward trend in return correlations, except for the European stock markets. Second, the increasing importance of industry factors relative to country factors was a short-lived, temporary phenomenon. JEL Classification: C52, G11, G12APT model, Comovements, correlation dynamics, Factor models, global market integration, industry country debate, international diversification

International Stock Return Comovements

We examine international stock return comovements using country-industry and country-style portfolios. We first establish that parsimonious risk-based factor models capture the covariance structure of the data better than the popular Heston-Rouwenhorst (1994) model. We then establish the following stylized facts regarding stock return comovements. First, we do not find evidence for an upward trend in return correlations, excpet for the European stock markets. Second, the increasing imporatnce of industry factors relative to country factors was a short-lived, temporary phenomenon. Third, we find no evidence for a trend in idiosyncratic risk in any of the countries we examine.