(PDF file)
Do large investors increase the vulnerability of a country to speculative
attacks in the foreign exchange markets? To address this issue, we build
a model of currency crises where a single large investor and a continuum
of small investorssimultaneously decide whether to attack a currency based
on their private information about fundamentals. In the unique equilibrium
of this trading game, the presence of the large investor does, indeed,
make all other investors more aggressive in their selling. Relative to
the case in which there is no large trader, small investors attack the
currency at higher values of the
fundamentals. Yet, the difference can be small, or null, depending
on the relative precision of private information of the small and
large investors. A large but relatively uninformed speculator makes little
difference for the design of the optimal strategies by the rest of the
market.
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