An Ex-Post Investigation Of Interest Rate Parity In Asian Emerging Markets

Abstract

This paper investigates the uncovered interest parity theory for the three emerging markets of Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand.  The study provides evidence on the efficiency of the currency markets of these economies. In this paper we test for the uncovered interest parity because futures markets for currencies of most emerging markets are not well developed.  Furthermore, short- term exchange rate supply and demand are often dominated by the uncovered international investments.  Several statistical tests are applied in an attempt to detect evidence of uncovered interest parity.  We find there is evidence that the currencies of higher interest rate emerging economies tend to depreciate in the future spot market. However, our test results indicate that this relationship does not support the uncovered interest parity strictly.  Arbitrage opportunities remain for a longer periods than predicted by the uncovered interest parity.  Furthermore, these abnormal gains are not random and could be predicted by a well designed econometric model.  These findings are consistent with empirical findings surrounding uncovered interest parity for mature markets of the world.