The Probability Distribution of Foreign Exchange Price Changes: Tests of Candidate Processes

This study investigates empirically candidate processes for characterizing foreign exchange price changes measured over limited horizons. Extant empirical studies find distributions of exchange returns too long-tailed and leptokurtic to satisfy normality. Four processes are investigated here because of their potential to model o bserved discontinuities in exchange rates and nonstationary sample moments, as well as their economic appeal. The results favor a mixed-jump model for all six major trading currencies tested. Copyright 1988 by MIT Press.