The Dollar during the Great Recession: The Information Channel of U.S. Monetary Policy and the “Flight to Safety”
Published online on March 30, 2026
Abstract
["The Journal of Finance, Volume 81, Issue 2, Page 971-1010, April 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nConventional wisdom holds that lowering a home country's interest rate relative to another's will depreciate the domestic currency. We document that, at business‐cycle frequencies, U.S. forward guidance monetary policy easings had the opposite effect during the Great Recession. We attribute this effect to calendar‐based forward guidance that signaled economic weakness, resulting in a “flight‐to‐safety” effect and lower expected U.S. inflation. We also document cross‐currency heterogeneity: a surprise U.S. rate cut induced a larger appreciation of the dollar against currencies that typically depreciate more when the world economy is contracting. We build a model that can reconcile these findings."]