Exchange Rate Volatility, Monetary Policy, and Capital Mobility: Empirical Evidence on the Holy Trinity

This paper uses a panel of data from twenty-two countries between 1967 and 1992 to explore the tradeoff between the 'Holy Trinity' of fixed exchange rates, independent monetary policy, and capital mobility. I use: flexible- and sticky-price monetary exchange rate models to parameterize monetary divergence; factor analysis to extract measures of capital mobility from a variety of different indicators; and conditional exchange rate volatility to measure the degree to which the exchange rate is fixed. Exchange rate volatility is loosely linked to both monetary divergence and the degree of capital mobility. Interestingly, exchange rate volatility is significantly correlated with the width of the explicitly declared exchange rate band, even after taking monetary divergence and capital mobility into account.