In the past year we have attempted to incorporate forward-looking exchange rates into our econometric model, GEM. This work is still at an experimental stage, and hence will not be immediately available to model-users, but we feel we have made sufficient progress to present some of the results.

The introduction of forward-looking exchange rates is consistent with modern economic theories of exchange-rate determination. These view the exchange rate as an asset price, which is valued according to the expected returns from holding domestic and foreign assets. This gives rise to the short-run arbitrage condition, that the interest-rate differential between equivalent assets in different currencies should equal the expected depreciation of the exchange rate between those currencies. The expected depreciation is determined by a longer-term view of the currencies' worth, which can be related to the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate (FEER), which would achieve a balance between the current account and long-term capital account flows. Previous work at the Institute has expanded on some of these issues. Davies (1988) and Gurney (1988) look at some the issues raised by forward-looking exchange rates. Barrell, Gurney, Pesaran and Wren-Lewis (1988) look at alternative forward-looking models and Barrell and Wren-Lewis (1989) investigate FEERs based on the trade equations used in GEM.