Does the Interest Parity Puzzle Hold for Central and Eastern European Economies?

Abstract

This paper examines the uncovered interest parity puzzle in Central and Eastern European countries. Apart from investigating baseline UIP regressions, we check for structural breaks in this relationship, scrutinize deviations from the UIP, and employ different estimation methods and models augmented with various risk measures. Moreover, we offer several extensions to the common UIP testing that account for foreign-exchange interventions, the implied volatility of exchange rates, and the limited availability of data on direct measures of market expectations. The study shows that the choice of the reference currency matters for the outcome of the interest parity tests in the CEE economies. In particular, we demonstrate that inconsistencies between the results of the UIP tests vis-à-vis the euro and the US dollar that appear in CEE economies may be accounted for by the movements of the euro-dollar risk premium. This regularity has not been documented in previous studies. Additionally, we show that (a) the FX interventions in Czechia distorted the UIP, (b) the directly measured exchange rate expectations (granular survey data) in Poland do not seem to be informed by the UIP relationship, (c) the limited resilience of CEE economies to rare disasters may plausibly explain deviations from the UIP.