The case for foreign exchange intervention: the government as an active reserve manager

Abstract

This paper argues that major governments should actively manage their foreign exchange portfolios to maximize the risk-adjusted return to the taxpayer by exploiting long-term, fundamental based predictability in floating exchange rates. Such transactions—equivalent to foreign exchange intervention—would improve welfare by transferring risk from private agents to the risk-tolerant government. Interventions explicitly designed to profit the reserve management authority would be more likely to be successful and, to the extent that they are, would reduce resource misallocation.Foreign exchange