Some new stylized facts of floating exchange rates

This paper re-examines real exchange rate behavior of OECD currencies under the current float using the more extensive dataset that an additional decade's worth of experience has made available. What emerges is a new set of stylized facts, which suggest that the problems of the current float were not, as commonly believed, generic to that system but in fact rather specific, being largely confined to one sub-period - the early and mid-1980s - and one currency - the US dollar. This dollar behavior ranks as one of the important puzzles of the past 25 years. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.