Official Intervention and Exchange Rate Determination: Evidence from India

Abstract

Despite the adoption of a market-oriented regime, Reserve Bank of India explicitly practices sterilized intervention to normalize unfavourable developments in the market. This study seeks to find empirical evidence on the intensity to which the monetary authority was able to achieve its policy objective of directing exchange rate in the anticipated trail. The study employed an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to estimate the central bank reaction function in this regard. It was found that 1% purchase of foreign exchange reserve (net intervention) depreciated Indian Rupee by 0.255% for long-term. Whereas in short-term, intervention followed “leaning against the wind” policy to curb market vagueness. The findings of the study recommend that there should be more coordinated approach between official intervention policy and monetary policy formulation in consonance with the economic fundamentals for increasing the effectiveness and sustainability of the intervention operations.