Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 08/2008

New Estimates of Fundamental Equilibrium Exchange Rates

William R. Cline, John Williamson

July 2008

Peterson Institute for International Economics

Abstract

From early in its existence, the Peterson Institute for International Economics has occasionally produced estimates of the fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) of major currencies. We have long felt that there would be value in regularly producing such numbers, so that observers had a metric with which tojudge ongoing changes in exchange rates but were deterred from producing such estimates by the difficulties and expense involved in making estimates of FEERs in the absence of a working model. There are, of course, floating fundamentalists who regard such an exercise as superfluous, because the market is by definition always right....