Foreign Currency Translation Reporting and the Exchange-Rate Exposure Effect

This study further explores a structural break in the relation between stock returns of firms with foreign currency positions and lagged exchange rate changes (exchange rate exposure effect) documented in Bartov and Bodnar (1994). We examine whether changes in the financial accounting reporting of foreign currency positions from SFAS No. 52 might have improved investors' ability to characterize firms' economic exchange rate exposures, and thus the impact of exchange rate movements on firm value. Our findings indicate that only firms reporting using the dollar as the functional currency (i.e., those reporting as if they were still under SFAS No. 8) retain a significant relation between the lagged change in the dollar and firm value in the post-SFAS No. 52 period. For firms reporting using the foreign currency as the functional currency (i.e., those who switched to the new translation method) the significant lagged relation disappears. This is consistent with the use of a foreign currency as the functional currency under SFAS No. 52 facilitating valuation of U.S. firms with foreign operations.     

UK Multinationals' Effective Use of Financial Currency‐Hedge Techniques: Estimating and Explaining Foreign Exchange Exposure Using Bilateral Exchange Rates

Using a unique dataset of recently available accounting disclosures, this study examines the relationship between UK multinationals' stock returns and changes in the principal exchange rate to which each firm is most exposed. We find more firms with significant foreign exchange exposure estimates using this firm‐specific principal currency data, compared with those exposure estimates using the broad exchange rate index data prevalent in prior studies. The cross‐sectional variations in such principal‐currency exposure estimates are explained in relation to the financial currency‐hedge techniques that each firm specifically identifies as being used to manage its currency risk. In particular, we provide evidence that firms effectively use foreign currency derivatives and foreign‐denominated debt to reduce the currency risk associated with the bilateral exchange rate to which they are most exposed. This study is important to both the academic and the practitioner communities because it represents the first use of publicly available UK disclosures to improve the estimation and explanation of foreign exchange exposure.     

A Firm-Specific Analysis of the Exchange-Rate Exposure of Dutch Firms

We examine the relationship between exchange‐rate changes and stock returns for a sample of Dutch firms over 1994–1998. We find that over 50 per cent of the firms are significantly exposed to exchange‐rate risk. Furthermore, all firms with significant exchange‐rate exposure benefit from a depreciation of the Dutch guilder relative to a trade‐weighted currency index. This result confirms that firms in open economies, such as the Netherlands, exhibit significant exchange‐rate exposure. We collect unique information on the most relevant individual currencies for each firm with respect to their influence on firm value. Our results indicate that the use of a trade‐weighted currency index and the use of individual exchange rates are complements. We also measure the determinants of exchange‐rate exposure. As expected, we find that firm size and the foreign sales ratio are significantly and positively related to exchange‐rate exposure. In contrast with our hypothesis, off‐balance hedging using derivatives has no significant effects. Finally, in line with theory, we find that exposure is significantly reduced through on‐balance sheet hedging, i.e., through foreign loans and by producing in factories abroad.     

Asymmetric Foreign Currency Exposures and Derivatives Use: Evidence from France

This paper provides evidence on the asymmetric sensitivity of stock returns of French firms to exchange rate risk and the effect of foreign currency (FC) derivative use in alleviating this risk. The results show that FC exposure is frequently asymmetric and differs with respect to the US dollar (USD) and non‐USD currencies. Cross sectional analysis provides evidence that FC derivatives use has a significant effect on reducing FC exposure to appreciations and depreciations of non‐USD currencies and depreciations of the USD, but not to appreciations of the USD.     

Currency news and international bond markets

We use a sample of 27 countries and 63 currency news announcements in an event study framework to examine the impact of currency news on international government bond markets. Our findings reveal a significant spillover of currency news into bond markets. Specifically, the evidence shows significant negative abnormal bond returns, whether measured in dollar terms or local currency terms, implying that currency news plays a role in changing the performance of international government bond markets. We also show that abnormal bond returns remain significantly negative even after controlling for macroeconomic variables. Our results are robust to using alternative risk model specifications, country-level data, and corporate bond data. Our evidence of the significant impact of currency news on bond markets provides essential insights to professional traders, policymakers, and academic researchers.     

Region-wide connectedness of Asian equity and currency markets

This study systemically analyzes the dynamics of interdependence between the Asian equity and currency markets. The novelty of our study is that unlike other studies that explore either co-movements among equity markets or co-movements among currency markets, we pay particular attention to the interdependence between the two in terms of both return and volatility connectedness. We find that the contribution of crossspillovers between the Asian equities and currencies is substantial for the region-wide connectedness of both the returns and volatilities. We also find that the short-term spillovers are far more important for the return spillovers, while the long-term spillovers are far more important for the volatility spillovers, presumably reflecting the long-lasting effects of volatility shocks. All the results consistently underline the pivotal role of cross-interdependence between equity and currency markets, both as channels for integrating Asian financial markets and as sources of financial contagion across these markets. Our findings will provide useful guidance for portfolio risk management to adopt better hedging strategies for foreign exchange risks involved in the international investment of Asian equities.     

Currency Mismatching

This paper considers a firm domiciled in an emerging market, modeling its decision to denominate its debt in a combination of its domestic currency and a foreign currency, that is, the dollar. The objective is to determine those situations when the firm is motivated to engage in currency mismatching, that is, denominating a higher percentage of its debt in dollars than what is warranted by its dollar‐denominated sales. The following factors are shown to induce greater currency mismatching: speculative capital flows into the emerging market, reduced ability to price discriminate between domestic and foreign customers, increased exchange rate stability, and lower risk‐aversion. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sovereign rating changes—Do they provide new information for stock markets?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of sovereign rating changes on international financial markets using a comprehensive database of 42 countries, covering the major regions in the world over the period 1995–2003. In general, we find that rating agencies provide stock and foreign exchange markets with new tradable information. Specifically, rating upgrades (downgrades) significantly increased (decreased) USD denominated stock market returns and decreased (increased) volatility. Whereas the mean response is contributed evenly by the local currency stock returns and exchange rate changes that make up the USD returns, only the foreign exchange volatility was behind the USD denominated return volatility. In addition, we find significant asymmetric effects of rating announcements. The market responses – both return and volatility – are more pronounced in the cases of downgrades, foreign currency debt, emerging market debt, and during crisis periods. This study has important policy implications for international investors’ asset allocation plans and for regulatory bodies such as the Basel Committee who increasingly rely upon Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch's ratings for their regulatory regimes.     

Liquidity constrained exporters

I propose a model of international trade with liquidity constraints. If firms must pay a fixed entry cost in order to access foreign markets, and if they face liquidity constraints to finance these costs, only those firms that have sufficient liquidity are able to export. A set of firms could profitably export, but are prevented from doing so because they lack sufficient liquidity. More productive firms that generate large liquidity from their domestic sales, and wealthier firms that inherit a large amount of liquidity, are more likely to export. This model offers a potential explanation for the apparent lack of sensitivity of exports to exchange rate fluctuations. When the exchange rate appreciates, existing exporters lose competitiveness abroad, and are forced to reduce their exports. At the same time, the value of domestic assets owned by potential exporters increases. Some liquidity constrained exporters start exporting. This dampens the anti-competitiveness impact of a currency appreciation. Under some conditions, it may reverse it altogether and increase aggregate exports. In this sense, the model is able to rationalize the co-existence of competitive devaluations and competitive revaluations.     

The transmission of US economic policy uncertainty shocks to Asian and global financial markets

This paper proposes a novel approach to investigating the spillover effects of US economic policy uncertainty shocks on the global financial markets. Employing a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR), we model US economic policy uncertainty jointly with the latent factors extracted from equity prices, exchange rates, and commodity prices. We find that US economic policy uncertainty affects these factors significantly. A country-level analysis shows heterogeneous responses to an increase in US economic policy uncertainty. With regard to equities, US economic policy uncertainty adversely affects equity prices. However, its impact on the Chinese equity market is relatively small. As for foreign exchange markets, while many currencies depreciate in response to an increase in US economic policy uncertainty, the US dollar and the Japanese yen appreciate, reflecting their safe-haven status. The Chinese yuan, whose nominal exchange rate is closely linked to the US dollar, also appreciates in response to uncertainty shocks.     

人民币汇率变动研究——基于人民币对美元和非美元货币汇率的分析

目前随着美元币值的变化,人民币对美元小幅贬值或升值,但人民币对非美元货币的贬值或升值则往往相反,这种变化使得我们对人民币币值的变化难以把握.本文研究人民币对美元和非美元汇率变动,并在此基础上研究人民币有效汇率指数变化;根据人民币有效汇率指数,构建人民币核心汇率指数并分析其变动及意义.本文认为,人民币汇率目标主要侧重于人民币对美元汇率,而人民币对非美元货币汇率波动有更大的弹性,因此,如果央行以人民币有效汇率为目标,则能够确定每天人民币对美元汇率的中间价,真正建立人民币参考一篮子货币的汇率目标.     

Modelling Currency Crises in Emerging Markets: A Dynamic Probit Model with Unobserved Heterogeneity and Autocorrelated Errors*

The paper investigates the causes of currency crises in emerging markets. We estimate the probability of a currency crisis by applying maximum smoothly simulated likelihood to a dynamic LDV model. This approach allows us to take explicit account of the existence of intertemporal links between crises. The results show that currency crises are influenced by real, monetary, debt and global variables. Past banking crises are significant determinants of the probability of currency crises. Moreover, countries that sharply devalued in the past are less prone to experience another currency crisis. We find evidence of unobserved heterogeneity, which may reflect differences in the countries’ institutional/historical background. Finally, the determinants of currency crises differ by type of exchange rate regime.     

Oil prices,stock returns,and exchange rates: Empirical evidence from China and the United States

Employing the diagonal BEKK model as well as the dynamic impulse response functions, this study investigates the time-varying trilateral relationships among real oil prices, exchange rate changes, and stock market returns in China and the U.S. from February 1991 to December 2015. We highlight several key observations: (i) oil prices respond positively and significantly to aggregate demand shocks; (ii) positive oil supply shocks adversely and significantly affect the Chinese stock market; (iii) oil price shocks persistently and significantly impact the trade-weighted US dollar index negatively; (iv) the US and China stock markets correlate positively just as the dollar index and the exchange rate does; (v) a significant parallel inverse relation exists between the US stock market and the dollar and between the China stock market and the exchange rate; and (vi) the Chinese stock market is more volatile and responsive to aggregate demand and oil price shocks than the US stock market in recent years.     

Implied volatility term structure and exchange rate predictability

This paper provides empirical evidence of the predictive power of the currency implied volatility term structure (IVTS) for the behavior of the exchange rate from both cross-sectional and time series perspectives. Intriguingly, the direction of the prediction is not the same for developed and emerging markets. For developed markets, a high slope means low future returns, while for emerging markets it means high future returns. We analyze predictability from a cross-sectional perspective by building portfolios based on the slope of the term structure, and thus present a new currency trading strategy. For developed (emerging) currencies, we buy (sell) the two currencies with the lowest slopes and sell (buy) the two with the highest slopes. The proposed strategy performs better than common currency strategies – carry trade, risk reversal, and volatility risk premium (VRP) – based on the Sharpe ratio, considering only currency returns, which supports the exchange rate predictability of the IVTS from a cross-sectional perspective.     

Incorporating the RMB internationalization effect into its exchange rate volatility forecasting

Recently, the Chinese government has launched the renminbi (RMB) internationalization policy as an impetus to foster China’s global economic integration. The RMB internationalization effect on China’s economy and the RMB exchange rate has attracted massive attention in recent financial research. In this paper, we adopt a genetic programming (GP) method to generate new RMB exchange rate volatility forecasting models incorporating the RMB internationalization effect. Our models are proved to have significant accuracy improvement in predicting both RMB/US dollar and RMB/euro exchange rate volatilities, compared with standard GARCH volatility models, which are incapable of capturing the RMB internationalization effect. Furthermore, our models display salient practical implications for policy makers to formulate monetary policies and currency traders to design effective trading strategies.     

人民币实际有效汇率的分解和马歇尔—勒纳条件的修正

马歇尔-勒纳条件是探讨货币贬值改善贸易收支的规律,本文根据人民币实际有效汇率的特点,把它分解为美元有效汇率和人民币对美元汇率之积形式,在此基础之上,本文重新考察货币贬值改善贸易收支的条件,对传统的马歇尔-勒纳条件进行修正。从我们研究中可以看出美元实际有效汇率变化对马歇尔-勒纳条件修正的重要作用,这包括美元有效汇率对人民币汇率弹性和人民币在美元有效汇率中的权重的两种影响。另一方面,即使人民币实际有效汇率贬值存在“J”曲线效应,人民币对美元实际汇率贬值,“J”曲线是否存在还要依赖一定的条件。本文实证研究结果显示出口（或进口）与人民币对美元实际汇率、美元实际有效汇率指数和外国收入（或国内收入）之间存在着显著的协整关系,美元实际有效汇率和人民币对美元实际汇率也存在显著的协整关系。从弹性的变化来看,修正的马歇尔-勒纳条件成立,同时人民币对美元实际汇率贬值有利于改善贸易收支,美元实际有效汇率贬值会恶化中国贸易收支。而对“J”曲线效应的实证研究显示无论是人民币实际有效汇率,还是人民币对美元实际汇率贬值和美元实际有效汇率贬值,我国“J”曲线效应均不显著。     

Hedging Foreign Exchange Exposure: Risk Reduction from Transaction and Translation Hedging

Using a sample of Swedish firms we investigate the risk reducing effect of foreign exchange exposure hedging. Further, we investigate risk reduction from using different hedging instruments, and particular interest is directed towards the impact of transaction exposure hedges and translation exposure hedges respectively. We find that firms' foreign exchange exposure is increasing with the level of inherent exposure, measured as the difference between revenues and costs denominated in foreign currency, and that it is decreasing with firm size. We find a significant reduction in foreign exchange exposure from the use of financial hedges. The evidence suggests that the usage of foreign denominated debt as well as currency derivatives reduce firms' foreign exchange exposure. Further, we find that transaction exposure hedges significantly reduce exposure, and that translation exposure hedges also reduce exposure. A possible explanation for the latter is that translation exposure approximates the exposed value of future cash flows from operations in foreign subsidiaries (i.e. economic exposure). If so, by hedging translation exposure, economic exposure is reduced.     

A quantile-copula approach to dependence between financial assets

This article unveils the dependence structure between United States stock prices, crude oil prices, exchange rates, and U.S. interest rates. In particular, we employ linear and nonlinear estimation methods, such as quantile regression and the quantile-copula approach. Over the 1998–2017 period, we find that there is a positive relationship between the dollar value and the S&P 500 stock price, with the exception of the lower and upper tails of the stock return distribution. Further evidence is obtained on the dependence structure between other asset returns. The stock returns are negatively related to oil prices but positively to U.S. interest rates. Our results highlight the way that financial assets are linked, which have implications for risk management and monetary policy.     

Currency depreciation effects on ADR returns: evidence from Latin America

We use seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) and multivariate regression models (MVRM) in a panel sample of 74 American depository receipts (ADR) programs from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico during the period May 1994 to May 2009 to analyze the behavior of ADR returns during the 300-day period surrounding the currency crises breakdown in the originator??s country. Controlling for the underlying stock and local and host country equity indices, we find that ADRs generate significant negative abnormal returns during currency crises, due to translation exposure. Abnormal returns remain statistically significant even in crises triggered by currency depreciations as small as 3.6%. The results persist after including exchange rate returns as a control variable and after an orthogonalization procedure of exchange rate against local country indices. In agreement with ADR literature, our results show that ADR prices are determined primarily by the underlying stock, exchange rates, and host country index, in that order. Moreover, we observe how market integration has become evident in more recent times as the coefficients for the U.S. stock market have increased its contribution to ADR price discovery.     

On the predictability of the distribution of excess returns in currency markets

This paper investigates the predictability of foreign exchange (FX) volatility and liquidity risk factors on returns to the carry trade, an investment strategy that borrows in currencies with low interest rates and invests in currencies with high interest rates. Previous studies have suggested that this predictability could have been spuriously accounted for due to the persistence of the predictors. The analysis uses a predictive quantile regression model developed by Lee (2016) that allows for persistent predictors. We find that predictability changes remarkably across the entire distribution of currency excess returns. Predictability weakens substantially in the left tail once persistence is accounted for, implying a moderate negative predictive relation between FX volatility risk and carry trade returns. By contrast, it becomes stronger in the right tail. Furthermore, we provide evidence that FX volatility risk still dominates liquidity risk after controlling for persistence. These findings suggest that the persistence of the predictors needs to be taken into account when one measures predictability in currency markets. Finally, out-of-sample forecast performance is also presented.