Testing the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis during the 1920s

This paper reexamines the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis (FRUH) during the 1920s and it contributes to the literature as follows: first, it utilizes a database that includes currencies not studied before, as well as the 3 month forward rates; second, it applies three different approaches to test for cointegration and it shows that the choice of the technique is not of crucial importance; third, it tests for the temporal stability of the cointegration results; finally, it tests for the existence of the FRUH in the short run, by means of error correction models, whereas previous studies focused on cointegrated vectors only. Our analysis shows that for countries that did not undergo major financial turmoil during that period, there exists more favorable evidence for the FRUH.     

The forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis reexamined: evidence from a new test

Under conditions of risk neutrality and rational expectations in the foreign exchange market, there should be a one-to-one relationship between the forward rate and the corresponding future spot rate. However, cointegration-based tests of the unbiasedness hypothesis of the forward rate have produced mixed findings. In order to exploit significant cross-sectional dependencies, we test the unbiasedness hypothesis using a new multivariate (panel) unit-root test, the Johansen likelihood ratio (JLR) test, which offers important methodological advantages over alternative standard panel unit-root tests. When applied to a data set of eight major currencies in the post-Bretton Woods era, the JLR test provides strong and robust evidence in support of a unitary cointegrating vector between forward and corresponding future spot rates. However, the orthogonality condition is satisfied only for three major currencies.     

The forward exchange rate and the prediction of the future spot rate: Empirical evidence

This paper examines the characteristics and evaluates the record of the forward exchange rate as a predictor of the future spot rate of three European currencies during the recent period of floating rates. The forward rate (for 1, 3 and 6 months) is compared to a simple predictor of ‘no change’ extrapolations (i.e., a Martingale model) by the use of Theil's inequality ratios. Theil's measures are then applied to assess the relative importance of the various sources of the forward's prediction errors, and the efficiency of the forecast is tested. The results show that the forward rate, while generally producing unbiased forecasts, fails to track the fluctuations in future spot rates and poorly reflects their variations. Further, it does not perform better than the current spot rate in predicting the future spot rate for all the examined forecast leads. Thus its usefulness for the purpose of business decisions is questioned.     

Weekly Pattern of Exchange Rate Risks: Evidence from Ten Asian-Pacific Currencies

This paper examines the day-of-the-week effect on the currency returns of ten Asian-Pacific countries and differs from previous studies in that it tests directly the effect on higher moments of currency returns. Using ten-year daily data, the results first show that currency returns are non-normally distributed, particularly with very large kurtosis. The hypothesis of equal higher moments (e.g., skewness or kurtosis or both) cannot be rejected by any pair of weekdays only for the Australian dollar. For the remaining nine currencies, the same hypothesis is rejected by at least one pair of weekdays. Six currencies reject the hypothesis in all pairs of weekdays, supporting the existence of the day-of-the-week effect on higher moments. Further analysis shows that Rogalski's effect exists on the higher moments of three currencies because the day-of-the-week effect exists only in non-January months. Sub-period analysis indicates that the weekly patterns on higher moments are quite consistent across two sub-periods for all currencies except the Taiwanese dollar. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An International Portfolio Optimization Model Hedged with Forward Currency Contracts

We will propose a new method for constructing an optimal portfolio in which the fund is allocated to assets and currencies of several countries. Traditionally, two or three stage method is adopted in this field. However, it neglects the risk associated with variations of the rate of return of individual assets and the exchange rate of currencies. Instead, the new method enables one to simultaneously determine the optimal amount of fund to be allocated to each asset and the amount of the forward contracts on currencies. The resulting optimization problem is apparently a nonconvex minimization problem due to the existence of product terms in the objective function. We will show, however, that a globally optimal solution can be calculated by a standard algorithm in an efficient way. Also we will demonstrate that the new method leads to a substantially better result using historical data of U.S., Japan and Germany.     

Properties of foreign exchange risk premiums

We study the properties of foreign exchange risk premiums that can explain the forward bias puzzle, defined as the tendency of high-interest rate currencies to appreciate rather than depreciate. These risk premiums arise endogenously from the no-arbitrage condition relating the term structure of interest rates and exchange rates. Estimating affine (multi-currency) term structure models reveals a noticeable tradeoff between matching depreciation rates and accuracy in pricing bonds. Risk premiums implied by our global affine model generate unbiased predictions for currency excess returns and are closely related to global risk aversion, the business cycle, and traditional exchange rate fundamentals.     

The Forward Exchange Rate Bias Puzzle Is Persistent: Evidence from Stochastic and Nonparametric Cointegration Tests

An important puzzle in international finance is the failure of the forward exchange rate to be a rational forecast of the future spot rate. We document that even after accounting for nonstationarity, nonnormality, and heteroskedasticity using parametric and nonparametric tests on data for over a quarter century, U.S. dollar forward rates for the major currencies (the British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, and the German mark) are generally not rational forecasts of future spot rates. These findings deepen the forward exchange rate bias puzzle, especially as these markets are the most liquid foreign exchange markets with very low trading costs.     

The forward market in emerging currencies: Less biased than in major currencies

Many studies have replicated the finding that the forward rate is a biased predictor of the future change in the spot exchange rate. Usually the forward discount actually points in the wrong direction. But, at least until recently, those studies applied only to advanced economies and major currencies. We apply the same tests to a sample of 14 emerging market currencies. We find a smaller bias than for advanced country currencies. The coefficient is on average positive, i.e., the forward discount at least points in the right direction. It is never significantly less than zero. To us this suggests that a time-varying exchange risk premium may not be the explanation for traditional findings of bias. The reasoning is that emerging markets are probably riskier; yet we find that the bias in their forward rates is smaller. Emerging market currencies probably have more easily-identified trends of depreciation than currencies of advanced countries.     

Cross-asset return predictability: Carry trades,stocks and commodities

Equity returns predict carry trade profits from shorting low interest rate currencies. Commodity price changes predict profits from longing high interest rate currencies. The gradual information diffusion hypothesis (Hong & Stein, 1999) provides a ready explanation for these predictability results. These results cannot be explained by time-varying risk premia as stock returns and commodity price changes significantly predict negative carry trade profits. The predictability is one-directional, from commodities to high interest rate currencies, from commodities to stocks and from stocks to low interest rate currencies.     

Does the forward premium puzzle disappear over the horizon?

This paper provides the first comprehensive study of the horizon effect in tests of the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis. It estimates Fama regressions employing 1-month through to 10-year horizon data for the five most heavily traded US dollar currency pairs pre-crisis 1980–2006. In contrast with extant studies, it fully deals with the econometric problems of long horizon regressions by means of a novel heteroskedastic- and autocorrelation-consistent bootstrap. The regression results confirm a clear horizon effect in that the slope coefficient approaches unity as the forward contract maturity is extended. The puzzle disappears at the 3-year horizon and beyond for all currencies.     

人民币汇率制度改革的背景及展望

从单一盯住美元到参考一篮子货币,实行以市场供求为基础的、有管理的浮动汇率——我国的汇率制度改革又迈出了重要的一步。本文通过对国际、国内背景分析,认为此次人民币汇率改革有利于改善贸易条件,减少贸易摩擦;有利于抑制通货膨胀,促进资源的合理配置;有利于降低外汇占款对货币政策自主性的干扰等。面对今后更具弹性的人民币汇率机制取向,文章建议相关部门应主动应对人民币进一步升值的预期和国际热钱炒作的压力;央行可通过“一篮子”货币的界定实现汇率调控的灵活性;人民币汇率更趋灵活性将加大央行对外汇市场管理的难度;大力发展远期外汇市场,利用衍生金融工具规避汇率风险。     

Measuring the forward foreign exchange risk premium: multi-country evidence from unobserved components models

We investigate the nature of the foreign exchange risk premium for a wide range of currencies, using unobserved components models with exactly matched spot and forward exchange rate data. Significant time-variation of the risk premium is documented for most currencies. Our estimates indicate considerable persistence in the risk premium, and suggest that the variability of the risk premium is quite low relative to the variability of the forward forecast error.     

Currency crisis and the forward discount bias: Evidence from emerging economies under breaks

This paper investigates the effects of two financial crises (the 1997 Asian currency crisis and the 2000 Turkish financial crisis) on the forward discount bias in 14 emerging-market economies using a robust two-stage procedure. This unique sample of less researched currencies displays: (i) high persistence in forward discount equations; and (ii) varying variance ratios between changes in exchange rates and the forward premium. The findings provide new insights into the forward discount puzzle: financial crises exert considerable power on the forward discount bias and uphold the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis (FRUH) by reverting the negative sign into positive.     

The bias of tests for a risk premium in forward exchange rates

The pure expectations theory of unbiased forward exchange rates predicts that the slope coefficient in a regression of the change in the spot rate on the difference between the current forward and spot rates should equal unity. In the recent empirical work by Fama, the estimates of this coefficient turn out to be negative in all regressions for nine major industrialized nations. This paper demonstrates that under the expectations theory, the sampling distribution of the regression estimator of this coefficient is upward-biased relative to unity and strongly skewed to the right. The likelihood of negative values is essentially zero. Thus, the estimator is biased in a direction opposite to what is observed. Since the observed estimates lie far out in the thin left-hand tail of the estimator's sampling distribution, the evidence against the hypothesis of unbiased forward rates is much stronger than previously believed.     

Forecast bias and accuracy of exchange rates in emerging markets

This study assesses the forecast bias and accuracy of the three commonly used forecast methods for 12 different emerging market currencies. We find that each forecast method commonly exhibits a forecast bias. The random walk method outperformed the forward rate and ARIMA methods for some emerging market currencies, and was not outperformed by these alternative methods. In general, it appears that the incorporation of expectation components by the implicit forward and ARIMA methods do not improve the forecast, and actually reduce forecast accuracy in some cases. Furthermore, the Latin American currencies were typically forecast with more error.     

The “forward premium puzzle” and the sovereign default risk

Carry-trade strategies which consist of buying forward high-yield currencies tend to yield positive excess returns when global financial markets are booming, whereas they generate losses during crises. Firstly, we show that the sovereign default risk, which is taken on by investing in high-yield currencies, may increase the magnitude of the gains during the boom periods and the losses during crises. We empirically test for this hypothesis on a sample of 18 emerging currencies over the period from June 2005 to September 2010, the default risk being proxied by the sovereign credit default swap spread. Relying on smooth transition regression (STR) models, we show that default risk contributes to the carry-trade gains during booms, and worsens the losses during busts. Secondly, we turn to the “Fama regression” linking the exchange-rate depreciation to the interest-rate differential. We propose a nonlinear estimation of this equation, explaining the puzzling evolution of its coefficient by the change in the market volatility along the financial cycle. Then, we introduce the default risk into this equation and show that the “forward bias”, usually evidenced by a coefficient smaller than unity in this regression, is somewhat alleviated, as the default risk is significant to explain the exchange-rate change.     

Forward exchange market unbiasedness: the case of the Australian dollar since 1984

This paper implements a robust statistical approach to regression with non-stationary time series. The methods were recently developed in other work and are briefly exposited here. They allow us to perform regressions in levels with non-stationary time series data, they accommodate data distributions with heavy tails and they permit serial dependence and temporal heterogeneity of unknown form in the equation errors. With these features the methods are well suited to applications with frequently sampled exchange rate data, which generally display all of these empirical characteristics. Our application here is to daily data on spot and forward exchange rates between the Australian and US dollars over the period 1984–1991, following the deregulation of the Australian foreign exchange market. We find big differences between the robust and the non-robust regression outcomes and in the associated statistical tests of the hypothesis that the forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot rate. The robust tests reject the unbiasedness hypothesis but still give the forward rate an important role as a predictor of the future spot rate.     

Forward interest rate premium and asymmetric adjustment: Evidence from 16 countries

This paper examines the ability of the forward premium to provide an unbiased estimate of the future spot rate allowing for potential asymmetries. Extant evidence suggests that forward rates provide a biased predictor of future spot rates. Examining the forward premium for 16 countries, only for 2 countries does the linear expectations hypothesis holds. For the remaining countries, results generally support the view that the larger the forward premium the better a predictor for future spot rates it is, however, this result is not unique across all countries. Furthermore, although the asymmetric model improves data fit over the linear model, only in four cases does the model support an unbiased predictor interpretation. Further research is therefore required to understand the nature of this relationship, not least given the importance of correctly priced forward and long rates in terms of expected returns to future investments and the conduct of monetary policy.     

Testing for long-run PPP in a system context: Evidence for the US,Germany and Japan

This paper extends the current literature on PPP by re-examining the validity of the PPP hypothesis for the three key currencies of the recent floating exchange rate period, in a multilateral framework. We argue that PPP testing is more adequate in a system context, which takes into account the dynamic interactions of exchange rates and prices of more than two economies, simultaneously. In the system analysis framework, some form of causality among the variables under consideration is also assessed empirically with the aid of weak exogeneity tests. The results illustrate the importance of the multilateral testing. Positive evidence for PPP is found: long-run PPP is supported for the US and Germany but also for the US and Japan, in contrast to evidence of earlier empirical studies. In addition, causality is found running from the US prices to the exchange rates and German and Japanese prices.