Exponentially damped Lévy flights, multiscaling, and exchange rates

We employ our previously suggested exponentially damped Lévy flight (Physica A 326 (2003) 544) to study the multiscaling properties of 30 daily exchange rates against the US dollar together with a fictitious euro-dollar rate (Physica A 286 (2000) 353). Though multiscaling is not theoretically seen in either stable Lévy processes or abruptly truncated Lévy flights, it is even characteristic of smoothly truncated Lévy flights (Phys. Lett. A 266 (2000) 282; Eur. Phys. J. B 4 (1998) 143). We have already defined a class of “quasi-stable” processes in connection with the finding that single scaling is pervasive among the dollar price of foreign currencies (Physica A 323 (2003) 601). Here we show that the same goes as far as multiscaling is concerned. Our novel findings incidentally reinforce the case for real-world relevance of the Lévy flights for modeling financial prices.