Understanding Exchange Rate Movements during the 2008 Financial Crisis

During the 2008 financial crisis, many advanced economies, whose banking systems suffered significant capital losses, experienced large and rapid exchange rate depreciations followed by prolonged and gradual appreciation in subsequent periods. In order to understand one possible explanation of these observed exchange rate movements, we develop a simple model of a highly leveraged banking sector in which banks obtain part of their funding from abroad. A fall in bank net worth leads to foreign lenders demanding a higher risk premium on credit supplied to domestic banks. This higher risk premium can be met if the exchange rate experiences an appreciation along the adjustment path, since this raises the value of the bank's earnings in terms of the foreign currency for every period that the foreign risk premium is elevated. In order for the exchange rate to appreciate by a large amount along the adjustment path, it must initially become undervalued – relative to its long-run level – so that in equilibrium the market is willing to bid up its value in subsequent periods. This thus gives rise to the large initial depreciation of the exchange rate followed by its prolonged and gradual appreciation.     

Currency-related risk and risk premium in the world's currency market

The foreign exchange market has become a major arena for investment activity for both corporate and individual investors. Intensive and widespread international investment activity makes the empirical estimation of exchange risk a very topical subject. In this connection, the classic controversy between Hicks and Telser assumes new relevance. In this paper, exchange risk is estimated in the context of the systematic-risk framework. The estimation is performed for three major floating currencies: the English pound, the Swiss franc, and the Deutsche mark, over a four-year period. The results suggest that although the total risk (measured by the variance) is high, the systematic risk is close to zero. This result provides an explanation for the apparent inconsistency between the Hicks-Keynes hypothesis which indicates the existence of a positive risk premium in the forward exchange market and the empirical evidence of a zero risk premium.     

Firm Market Performance and Volatility in a National Real Estate Sector

We present empirical evidence using daily data for stock prices for 17 real estate companies traded in the Sao Paulo, Brazil stock exchange, from August 26, 2006 to March 31, 2010. We use the U.S. house price bubble, financial crisis and risk measures to instrument for momentums and reversals in the domestic real estate sector. We find evidence of conditional premium persistence and conditional volatility persistence in the market. We find that the conditional risk-return relationship in the sector is consistent with the prospect theory of risk attitudes in this period. Certain companies seem to be operating on a perceived potential industry return above the target, while most others are below the target, and the whole sector is below target on average.     

The pricing of foreign exchange risk: Evidence from ADRS

This study investigates whether U.S. investors, in pursuing of international diversification, are exposed to foreign exchange risk through the ownership of American depository receipts (ADRs) and if so, whether such risk is systematic. We find that returns of ADRs from countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Africa are sensitive to their corresponding foreign exchange rate fluctuations. Using a technique developed by Sweeney and Warga (1986), we estimate the risk premium associated with foreign exchange risk. The results suggest that the total foreign exchange risk is priced at equilibrium. However, the incremental foreign exchange risk that is not imbedded in the market returns does not command a risk premium. The evidence indicates that the incremental foreign exchange risk is diversifiable or can be effectively hedged.     

MARKET DISCIPLINING OF THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES' SOVEREIGN GOVERNMENTS

In this article, we contribute to the current literature on market disciplining of the sovereign governments of the developing countries by distinguishing both sides of the market discipline hypothesis by adopting three‐stage least square estimation to incorporate the contemporaneous feedback effects between primary structural budget balances and the country's default‐risk premiums. We provide empirical evidence of a unidirectional causal relationship between a country's default‐risk premium and primary structural budget balances with the direction flowing from primary structural budget balances to country's risk premium in 40 developing countries over the period 1975–2008. We also employ the Arellano‐Bond dynamic panel generalized methods of moments estimation to control for this joint determination of primary structural budget balances and the country's default‐risk premium, and find supportive evidence of undisciplined sovereign governments and of nonlinearly behaving well‐functioning financial markets in the sample countries. (JEL C5, G1, G3)     

Anatomy of a balance-of-payments crisis : Application of a computable general equilibrium model to Turkey, 1978–1980

This paper analyses quantitatively the causes of the foreign exchange crisis in Turkey in the late 1970s through application of a multisector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The model incorporates some mechanisms that simulate the actual workings of the foreign exchange market during the turbulent foreign exchange disequilibrium period 1978–1980. It features the simultaneous operation of both quantitative controls and premium rationing schemes. Factors contributing to the foreign exchange crisis are analysed through counterfactual simulations which examine the implications for the Turkish economy of use of a flexible exchange rate, no oil price shock in the 1978–1980 period, and maintaining a constant price-level deflated affective exchange rate. Our results indicate that while exchange rate policy played an important role in bringing about the foreign exchange crisis, the influence of other factors was substancial.     

Risk premium,macroeconomic shocks,and information technology: an empirical analysis

This study empirically identifies the impact of various macroeconomic factors on the default risk premium. Using monthly data for the period 1970–2010 for the US, our estimations indicate that the monetary policy aggregates, risk-free interest rate, term structure of interest rates, inflation, and the state of the business cycle influence the risk premium. The results also provide some evidence in support of the hypothesis that the development of information technology has had a decreasing impact on the risk premium. As expected, various financial crises have had substantial and long-lasting effects on the premium. The results suggest that the direct impact of the subprime crisis and Lehman’s collapse on the risk premium was as large as two and a half percentage-points for a sustainable period. Foreign financial crises, in turn, have lowered the risk premium in the US market, suggesting a flight-to-safety phenomenon.     

The Risk Premium, Exchange Rate Expectations, and the Forward Exchange Rate: Estimates for the Yen–Dollar Rate

The hypothesis that the forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot rate has been rejected in many empirical studies. The rejection of this hypothesis could occur because market behavior is inconsistent with rational–expectations or because there exists a risk premium. Equations describing the forward premium and the change in the exchange rate are estimated jointly, and tests of both the rational–expectations and no–risk–premium hypotheses are conducted. Empirical estimates, obtained using quarterly data for the yen–dollar exchange rate, reject the rational–expectations hypothesis and suggest that there exists a time–varying risk premium.     

Modeling the dependence structure between default risk premium,equity return volatility and the jump risk: Evidence from a financial crisis

This paper investigates the dependence structure between default risk premium, equity return volatility and jump risk in the equity market before and during the subprime crisis. Using iTraxx CDS index spreads from Japanese and Australian markets, the paper models the different relationships that can exist in different ranges of behavior. We consider several Archimedean copula models with different tail dependence structures, namely, Gumbel, Clayton, Frank, AMH and Joe copulas. Although the dramatic change in the levels of the iTraxx CDS index, we find strong evidence that the dependence structure between CDS and stock market conditions is asymmetric and orienting toward the upper side. In addition, we find that the Japanese CDS market is more sensitive to the stock return volatility than the jump risk and the magnitude of this sensitivity is related to the market circumstances. However, Australian CDS market is more sensitive to the jump risk than stock return volatility before and during the financial crisis. This result has important implications for both global financial stability and default risk management. Specifically, the heterogeneity of markets, coupled with the diversity in the risk exposures cause the default risk premium and equity markets to exhibit different levels of sensitivity.     

Extracting shadow exchange rates and foreign exchange premia during currency crises: an example from Egypt

We utilize high-frequency data and a novel synchronous trade-matching algorithm to show that shadow exchange rates could be estimated from price spreads between depositary receipts and their underlying local stocks using an example of the recent Egyptian currency crisis. These shadow rates reflect the local black market foreign exchange rates in addition to a foreign exchange premium, which we attribute to the cost of expatriating capital during currency and capital control periods.     

COMMON FACTORS OF THE EXCHANGE RISK PREMIUM IN EMERGING EUROPEAN MARKETS

Existing empirical evidence suggests that the Uncovered Interest Rate Parity condition may not hold due to an exchange risk premium. For a panel dataset of eleven emerging European economies we decompose this exchange risk premium into an idiosyncratic (country‐specific) element and a common factor using a principal components approach. We present evidence of stationary idiosyncratic and common factors. This result leads to the conclusion of a stationary risk premium for these countries, which is consistent with previous studies often documenting a stationary premium in advanced countries. Furthermore, we report that the variation in the premium is largely attributable to a common factor influenced by economic developments in the United States.     

A re-examination of the impacts of macroeconomic and financial shocks on real exchange rate fluctuation: evidence from G7 and Asian countries

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to investigate the sources of real exchange rate fluctuation by utilizing sign restrictions in structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) method. Under an agnostic identification scheme, the empirical results show that the delayed overshooting puzzle still exists in response to monetary shock even if price puzzle is ruled out by construction. In contrast, all countries experience a significant initial real depreciation, and then gradually appreciate in response to currency risk premium (CRP) shock. This finding is consistent with Dornbusch’s overshooting model. In addition, I examine the importance of investors’ expectations in determining the short-term variations in the real exchange rate. The results indicate that the CRP and expectation shocks obviously outperformed the demand, supply and monetary shocks in terms of explaining the real exchange rate fluctuation.     

Do Crises Induce Reform? Simple Empirical Tests of Conventional Wisdom

We find evidence for the crisis-induces-reform hypothesis at extreme values of the inflation rate and the black market premium. Episodes of extremely high inflation or black market premiums are followed by periods of better performance than episodes of moderately high inflation or black market premiums. We fail to find similar evidence of the crisis hypothesis when crisis is measured as a high current account deficit, a high budget deficit, or a negative per capita growth rate. The pattern of foreign aid disbursements may help explain the results. Foreign aid is reduced at extreme values of inflation or the black market premium, while it is actually increased for more extreme values of the current account deficit and the budget deficit.     

Military spending and the black market premium in developing countries

Researchers who have been concerned with the economic implications of military spending have mostly concentrated on its impact on economic growth, corruption, real exchange rate and inflation. In this paper we investigate the impact of military spending on black market premium, an area that has not been tackled so far. After adding a measure of military spending to a well established model of black market premium form the literature, we estimate the model by pooling annual data over the 1985 – 1998 period across 61 developing countries. Results from five panel specifications provide considerable evidence that higher military spending leads to higher black market premium.     

中国债券市场的可预测性和分割性研究

本文研究了中国债券市场综合收益、长短期债券收益差异、银行间市场和交易所市场收益差异的样本内和样本外可预测性。本文选取宏观、中观（市场）、微观3个层面27个变量以及利用主成分分析法生成6个主成分变量作为预测变量,发现中国债券市场综合收益率在剥离了特殊品种债券之后具有一定的样本内和样本外可预测性。基于主成分提取的预测变量的预测能力更强,部分宏观经济指标和市场层面指标都可以预测债市风险溢价。基于27个指标提取的第一主成分对期限溢价、场所溢价在样本内均有较强的预测能力,而样本外可预测性较差。本文结论表明,我国债券市场容易受到宏观经济影响,银行间市场和交易所市场在市场功能上并没有很大的差异,两个市场的分割随着债券市场的波动而加剧。     

金融危机背景下银行类股票β值及其稳定性的实证检验

在金融研究中,风险和收益、个股与整个股市的波动一直是人们最为关注的问题。特别是在2007年8月美国次贷危机迅速蔓延后,各个公司更加重视股市波动的研究,以求最大限度地规避风险、获得最大收益。在金融研究中,人们通常用期望值表示收益,用方差和标准差来衡量风险。而在两者的关系研究中,资本资产定价模型反映了均衡状态下单个证券的预期回报与其相对市场风险值之间的关系,也描述了证券的风险溢价与市场组合风险溢价之间的关系。选择金融危机迅速传播后的2007年8月到2011年10月21日为研究时间段,选择上海证券交易所A股市场的浦发银行（600000）等14只银行类股票为研究对象,确定它们的值,研究银行类股票与整个股市波动的相关性,说明它们的风险溢价与市场组合风险溢价之间的变动关系。考虑到在所选时间段中,2010年3月开展的融资融券业务可能会对股票值的稳定性有所影响,因此,在求出这些股票的值后,还对这些股票值的稳定性进行了Chow检验。     

Uncovered Interest Parity at Long Horizons: Evidence on Emerging Economies*

This paper estimates uncovered interest parity (UIP) at long horizons using bilateral US dollar rates vis‐à‐vis mature economy and emerging market currencies. The paper finds support in favor of UIP for dollar rates vis‐à‐vis major mature economy currencies, but far less against emerging market currencies. There are also signs that political risk and the exchange risk premium help explain the empirical failure of UIP for these latter currencies. This suggests that whether UIP holds depends more on the currency than on the horizon.     

Export-Flexible Firms and Forward Markets

This paper examines the production and hedging decisions of an exporting firm under exchange rate uncertainty. The firm is export flexible in that it can distribute its output to either the domestic market or a foreign market, after observing the realized spot exchange rate. The firm is a monopoly in the domestic market but a price-taker in the foreign market. It is shown that the separation theorem holds if selling exclusively in the domestic market is suboptimal even under the most unfavorable sport exchange rate. Otherwise, the firm's optimal output depends on its preference and on the underlying exchange rate uncertainty. Furthermore, the export-flexible firm underhedges its exchange rate risk exposure in a currency forward market wherein the forward exchange rate contains a non-positive risk premium. [D21, F31]     

Investor sentiment,variance risk premium and delta-hedged gains

Delta-hedged gains are supposed to be negative and represent a volatility risk premium. Using a sample of Standard & Poor 500 index options from 2006 to 2009, this study documents two anomalies that cannot be explained by the volatility risk premium. First, delta-hedged gains are more negative for out-of-money options than for at-the-money options. Second, delta-hedged gains are significantly positive during financial crisis period. We propose a behavioural explanation in which both option prices and stock prices are affected by investor’s sentiment, but pessimistic sentiment has a greater impact on stock market than option market. This asymmetric response to pessimistic mood in turn affects the relative expensiveness of option prices.