An interval method for studying the relationship between the Australian dollar exchange rate and the gold price

This paper proposes an interval method to explore the relationship between the exchange rate of Australian dollar against US dollar and the gold price, using weekly, monthly and quarterly data. With the interval method, interval sample data are formed to present the volatility of variables. The ILS approach is extended to multi-model estimation and the computational schemes are provided. The empirical evidence suggests that the ILS estimates well characterize how the exchange rate relates to the gold price, both in the long-run and short-run. The comparison between the interval and point methods indicates that the difference between the OLS and the ILS estimates is increasing from weekly data to quarterly data, since the lowest frequency point data lost the most information of volatility. © 2012 Institute of Systems Science, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, CAS and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.