Andrea Beltratti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Finanziarie,
Università di Torino
Giuseppe Bertola
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Finanziarie,
Università di Torino
in Jeffrey Frenkel, Giampaolo Galli and Alberto Giovannini (editors),
The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets,
National Bureau of Economic Research,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996, p.229-253
Abstract
We study a foreign-exchange market where agents may be heterogeneous with respect to asset preferences, risk aversion, and money demand. Our analysis is motivated by the apparent heterogeneity in investors' position-taking in the eve of the September, 1992 European currency crisis, and in particular by the relevant evidence for the Italian lira in 1992. Accordingly, we focus on the balance-sheet effects of changes in probability of a devaluation. This affects both the expectation and the variance of return differentials across assets denominated in different currencies, hence the portfolio positions of different investors and central banks, and yields ex-post speculative gains and losses as the devaluation is realized.