How Well Do Monetary Fundamentals Forecast Exchange Rates?

For many years after the seminal work of Meese and Rogoff (1983a), conventional wisdom held that exchange rates could not be forecast from monetary fundamentals. Monetary models of exchange rate determination were generally unable to beat even a naive no-change model in out-of-sample forecasting. More recently, the use of sophisticated econometric techniques, panel data, and long spans of data has convinced some researchers (Mark and Sul, 2001) that monetary models can forecast a small, but statistically significant part of the variation in exchange rates. Others remain skeptical, however (Rapach and Wohar, 2001b, Faust, Rogers, and Wright, 2001). It remains a puzzle why even the most supportive studies find such a small predictable component to exchange rates. This article reviews the literature on forecasting exchange rates with monetary fundamentals and speculates as to why it remains so difficult.