Georg H. Strasser

On the Correlation Structure of Microstructure Noise in Theory and Practice

We argue for incorporating the financial economics of market microstructure into the financial econometrics of asset return volatility estimation. In particular, we use market microstructure theory to derive the cross-correlation function between latent returns and market microstructure noise, which feature prominently in the recent volatility literature. The cross-correlation at zero displacement is typically negative, and cross-correlations at nonzero displacements are positive and decay geometrically. If market makers are sufficiently risk averse, however, the cross-correlation pattern is inverted. Our results are useful for assessing the validity of the frequently-assumed independence of latent price and microstructure noise, for explaining observed crosscorrelation patterns, for predicting as-yet undiscovered patterns, and for making informed conjectures as to improved volatility estimation methods.

Is the intrinsic value of a macroeconomic news announcement related to its asset price impact

The literature documents a heterogeneous asset price response to macroeconomic news announcements. We relate this heterogeneity to a novel measure of the intrinsic value of an announcement—the announcement’s ability to nowcast GDP growth, inflation, and the federal funds target rate—and find that differences across the intrinsic values of several U.S. macroeconomic announcements explain a significant fraction of the variation in the impact each of these announcements has on U.S. Treasury yields. We also decompose the intrinsic value into the announcement’s relation to fundamentals, a timeliness premium, and a revision premium, and find that the former two characteristics are the most important ones in explaining the heterogeneous response.

Communication of Monetary Policy in Unconventional Times

Monetary policy communication is particularly important during unconventional times because high uncertainty about the economy, the introduction of new policy tools and possible limits to the central bank’s toolkit could hamper the predictability of policy actions. We study how monetary policy communication should and has worked under such circumstances. Our main results relate to announcements of asset purchase programmes and the use of forward guidance. We show that announcements of asset purchase programmes have lowered market uncertainty, particularly when accompanied by a contextual release of implementation details such as the envisaged size of the programme. We also show that forward guidance reduces uncertainty more effectively when it is state‐contingent or when it provides guidance about a long horizon than when it is open‐ended or covers only a short horizon, and that the credibility of forward guidance is strengthened if the central bank also has embarked on an asset purchase programme. JEL Classification: E43, E52, E58