The Role of Beliefs in Asset Prices: Evidence from Exchange Rates
78 Pages Posted: 23 Jul 2021 Last revised: 25 Apr 2022
Date Written: April 12, 2022
Abstract
A long-standing question is why asset prices sometimes underreact and sometimes overreact to news. We explore this question in currency markets. We use survey data to estimate a model featuring investors with noisy private information and extrapolative beliefs about interest rates, and find the estimated model quantitatively matches patterns of initial underreaction and delayed overreaction of currencies in response to interest rate news. The model also helps explain changes in the time-series predictability of currency returns by interest rates in recent years, the term structure of UIP deviations, and additional features of beliefs in survey data. Our results highlight the role of investors' beliefs in asset price behavior.
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