Rohan Kekre
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Social Science
Exchange rates, the prices at which one currency trades for another, set the relative cost of imports and exports and the returns from investing abroad. Yet they have long puzzled economists: they do not fit standard economic models and are very hard to predict.
- Fields
Social Science
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
exchange rates
international macroeconomics
international finance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Decompose the drivers of the U.S. dollar exchange rate against other advanced-economy currencies, using a general equilibrium model in which global arbitrageurs intermediate capital flows across borders.
- Distinguish between possible sources of demand shocks driving exchange rates by studying how exchange rates, bond prices and stock prices move together.
- Explain why exchange rates behave differently across countries by examining how differences in trade linkages and net foreign assets create uneven exposure to demand and intermediation shocks.
- Test whether the effects of foreign exchange intervention, government buying or selling of currency, depend on economic conditions, and whether this accounts for mixed evidence on its effectiveness.
More about the research
This project asks what actually moves exchange rates. It studies how they relate to other international asset prices, such as bonds and stocks in different countries, and to capital flows, the movement of money across borders.
Why it matters
Better understanding of what drives exchange rates could help market participants read the state of the global economy from currency movements. It could also help central banks and governments judge how monetary policy, fiscal policy and currency intervention affect exchange rates and the wider economy. The work may inform international policy frameworks that affect households, businesses and investors.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of Notre Dame, IN·Social Science
Model how occasionally binding capacity limits in supply chains shift domestic and import price Phillips Curves and fuel inflation, using a multisector open-economy New Keynesian model.
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Boston College, MA·Social Science
Develop the theory of a learning framework in which decision makers choose how much costly reasoning to do and update beliefs from experienced outcomes, and analyze its short-run and long-run properties.
Timothy Peterson
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Social Science
Code all government-mandated restrictions on international flows of goods, services, technology, finance, travel, media and diplomacy from 1992–2022 into the GRIER dataset, with each prohibited interaction as a unit.
The school
University of California-Berkeley: 46 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 825 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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