Effects of Financial Crises on the Long Memory Volatility Dependency of Foreign Exchange Rates: the Asian Crisis vs. the Global Crisis

This paper examines the effects of financial crises on the long memory volatility dependency of daily exchange returns focusing on the Asian crisis in 97-98 and the Global crisis in 08-09. By using the daily KRW-USD and JPY-USD exchange rates which have different trading regions and volumes, this paper first applies both the parametric FIGARCH model and the semi-parametric Local Whittle method to estimate the long memory volatility dependency of the daily returns and the temporally aggregated returns of the two exchange rates. Then it compares the effects of the two financial crises on the long memory volatility dependency of the daily returns. The estimation results reflect that the long memory volatility dependency of the KRW-USD is generally greater than that of the JPY-USD returns and the long memory dependency of the two returns appears to be invariant to temporal aggregation. And, the two financial crises appear to affect the volatility dynamics of all the returns by inducing greater long memory dependency in the volatility process of the exchange returns, but the degree of the effects of the two crises seems to be different on the exchange rates.