The impact of hedging on the market value of equity

We examine the annual stock performance of firms that disclose the use of derivatives to hedge over the period 1995 to 1999. We find that only 21.6% of publicly traded U.S. corporations in our sample hedged with derivative instruments over this period and their use is concentrated in the larger companies. Similar to other studies we find that when derivatives are used, interest rate and currency securities are used much more frequently than commodity products. Our sample of 1308 companies that hedge outperforms other securities by 4.3% per year on average over our sample period. This result is robust to several alternative methods of estimating abnormal returns. When we segment performance by the type of hedge used, however, we find that the over-performance is due entirely to larger firms that hedge currency. We find no abnormal returns for firms hedging either interest rates or commodities. The abnormal returns in firms hedging currency is robust to alternative models that seek to control for exchange rate fluctuations and global equity returns; however, we find no significant abnormal returns to currency hedgers when using an augmented model that controls for the role of intangible assets.     

Stochastic risk premiums,stochastic skewness in currency options,and stochastic discount factors in international economies

We develop models of stochastic discount factors in international economies that produce stochastic risk premiums and stochastic skewness in currency options. We estimate the models using time-series returns and option prices on three currency pairs that form a triangular relation. Estimation shows that the average risk premium in Japan is larger than that in the US or the UK, the global risk premium is more persistent and volatile than the country-specific risk premiums, and investors respond differently to different shocks. We also identify high-frequency jumps in each economy but find that only downside jumps are priced. Finally, our analysis shows that the risk premiums are economically compatible with movements in stock and bond market fundamentals.     

Currency Returns, Intrinsic Value, and Institutional-Investor Flows

We decompose currency returns into (permanent) intrinsic‐value shocks and (transitory) expected‐return shocks. We explore interactions between these shocks, currency returns, and institutional‐investor currency flows. Intrinsic‐value shocks are: dwarfed by expected‐return shocks (yet currency returns overreact to them); unrelated to flows (although expected‐return shocks correlate with flows); and related positively to forecasted cumulated‐interest differentials. These results suggest flows are related to short‐term currency returns, while fundamentals better explain long‐term returns and values. They also rationalize the long‐observed poor performance of exchange‐rate models: by ignoring the distinction between permanent and transitory exchange‐rate changes, prior tests obscure the connection between currencies and fundamentals.     

Currency futures-spot basis and risk premium

This paper explores the usefulness of currency futures-spot basis in predicting spot rate changes and currency futures returns. We conjecture that the currency risk premium may be an important component of the basis for long-maturity futures contracts, but may not be so for short-maturities. Thus, the basis of long-maturity contracts cannot predict the spot rate changes between now and maturity, rejecting uncovered interest rate parity (UIP), but can predict currency futures returns, which are solely determined by the risk premium. Conversely, the basis of the short-maturity contracts can predict the spot rate changes between now and maturity, validating the UIP, but cannot predict currency futures returns. Empirical tests support these conjectures for the Japanese, British, Swiss, and German currencies over the last two decades. The results are also consistent with Longstaff [Longstaff, F., 2000. The term structure of very short-term rates: new evidence for the Expectation Hypothesis. Journal of Financial Economics 58, 397–415], who shows that the Expectations Hypothesis holds at the very short end of the term structure of interest rates.     

Are There Optimal Multiple-Reserve Requirements?

A number of developing countries have adopted deficit finance regimes involving multiple- (currency and bond) reserve requirements. A key characteristic of these regimes is that the real interest rates on reservable bonds are higher than the real return rates on currency, so that the nominal interest rates on the bonds are positive. We seek an efficiency-based explanation for the existence of multiple-reserve regimes and for this key characteristic. We find that there are economies in which some of the efficient allocations can be supported only by multiple-reserve requirements, and that positive nominal bond rates may be needed to support some of these allocations. We also find that there are economies in which allocations supported by multiple-reserve regimes with negative nominal bond rates Pareto dominate single-reserve allocations, even when the latter are efficient relative to other single-reserve allocations. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E42, E58, H62.     

Pricing Currency Risks

The currency market features a small cross-section, and conditional expected returns can be characterized by few signals: interest differential, trend, and mean reversion. We exploit these properties to construct the ex ante mean-variance efficient portfolio of individual currencies. The portfolio is updated in real time and prices all prominent currency trading strategies, conditionally and unconditionally. The fraction of risk in these assets that does not affect their risk premiums is at least 85%. Extant explanations of carry strategies based on intermediary capital or global volatility are related to these unpriced components, while consumption growth is related to the priced component of returns.     

International Equity Index and Currency Futures: Commodity Currencies or Emerging Versus Developed Markets?

Equity index futures in both emerging and developing markets that are net commodity exporters are strongly linked to their respective currency futures markets. Unconditional correlations among equity and currency futures are the highest for these net basic materials producers in both emerging and developed markets. Granger causality tests also indicate that stock market returns are more strongly related to currency futures returns for commodity-exporting countries. Additionally, conditional correlations among currency and equity futures returns are the strongest for commodity-producing countries in both emerging and developed economies. Volatility spillover analysis provides consistent results. The overall results indicate that the status of a country as a net importer or exporter of raw materials is more important to the relationship between equity and currency futures than whether it is an emerging or developed economy.     

On the relationship between exchange rates and equity returns: A new approach

This paper employs a new approach in order to investigate the underlying relationship between stock markets and exchange rates. Current approaches suggest that the relative equity market performance of two countries is linked to their exchange rate. In contrast, this study proposes an alternative approach where one global variable – global equity market returns – is believed to have an effect on exchange rates, with the relative interest rate level of a currency determining the sign of the relationship. Our empirical findings suggest that exchange rates and global stock market returns are strongly linked. The value of currencies with higher interest rates is positively related with global equity returns, whereas the value of currencies with lower interest rates is negatively related with global equity returns.     

Can interest rate factors explain exchange rate fluctuations?

The level, slope, and curvature of the yield curve reflect time variation in investors’ risk premia and are known predictors of excess bond returns and economic activity. In this paper, I develop a term structure model under complete markets and no arbitrage to relate these interest rate factors to exchange rate fluctuations. The Gaussian properties of the stochastic discount factors imply non-linearities in exchange rate risk premia that are shown to account for up to half of the in-sample variation in one-year currency returns for different country pairs during the 1980s–2015 period. I find that interest rate factors help explain exchange rate fluctuations in and out of sample, particularly at longer horizons, and yield profitable currency portfolios relative to standard carry trade strategies.     

A Habit-Based Explanation of the Exchange Rate Risk Premium

This paper presents a model that reproduces the uncovered interest rate parity puzzle. Investors have preferences with external habits. Countercyclical risk premia and procyclical real interest rates arise endogenously. During bad times at home, when domestic consumption is close to the habit level, the representative investor is very risk averse. When the domestic investor is more risk averse than her foreign counterpart, the exchange rate is closely tied to domestic consumption growth shocks. The domestic investor therefore expects a positive currency excess return. Because interest rates are low in bad times, expected currency excess returns increase with interest rate differentials.     

Downside and upside risk spillovers between exchange rates and stock prices

We examined downside and upside risk spillovers from exchange rates to stock prices and vice versa for a set of emerging economies. We characterized the dependence structure between currency and stock returns using copulas and computed downside and upside value-at-risk and conditional value-at-risk. We documented a positive relationship between stock prices and currency values in emerging economies with respect to the US dollar and the euro, with downside and upside spillover risk effects transmitted both ways. Finally, we also documented asymmetries in upside and downside risk spillovers and asymmetric differences in the size of risk spillovers when the domestic currency values against the US dollar and the euro. Our results, consistent with flight-to-quality phenomena, have implications for downside and upside risk management of international investor portfolios in emerging markets.     

Currency crises and monetary policy: A study on advanced and emerging economies

The studies regarding the appropriate monetary policy response in defending the domestic currency following a currency crisis do not gather around a robust answer. This study tries to emphasize the notion that there is no single policy applicable for all currency crises happened and happening in the global world. The approach of the study is presenting empirical evidence by focusing separately on the advanced and emerging economies and proving that the monetary policy response for the emerging economies should be different from the advanced economies, depending mainly on the vulnerabilities of these economies preceding and during the crisis periods. The study includes twenty four economies, in which fifteen of them are emerging and nine of them are advanced, for the crisis periods between 1986 and 2009. The main finding of the study is that the tight monetary policy is effective in the advanced economies, and detrimental in the emerging economies faced financial turbulence. The monetary policy has no significance in recent crisis episodes both for advanced and emerging economies. Advanced economies besides having more independent central banking, lower country riskiness and almost no default history; mainly have second generation model weaknesses which cause the increased interest rates to be successful in stabilizing the exchange rates. For the emerging economies the third generation model weaknesses play a major role together with the first generation model vulnerabilities. Thus the major policy implication follows that the policy makers should take into account the economic fragilities during the crisis in implementing the monetary policy.     

Bond Risk Premia and The Exchange Rate

In emerging market economies, currency appreciation goes hand in hand with compressed sovereign bond spreads, even for local currency sovereign bonds. This yield compression comes from a reduction in the credit risk premium. Crucially, the relevant exchange rate involved in yield compression is the bilateral U.S. dollar exchange rate, not the trade-weighted exchange rate. Our findings highlight endogenous co-movement of bond risk premia and exchange rates through the portfolio choice of global investors who evaluate returns in dollar terms.     

Stocks for the long run? Evidence from emerging markets

We estimate the myopic (single-period) and intertemporal hedging (long-run) demand for stocks in 20 growth-leading emerging market economies during the 1999–2012 period. We consider two types of investors: a domestic investor who invests in emerging-market assets only (with returns in local currency) and an international investor who invests in both US and emerging-market assets (with returns in US dollars). We establish economically relevant short-run and long-run demand for stocks in several emerging market economies, for both domestic and international investors. From a welfare perspective, however, the myopic demand for emerging-market stocks is much more important than the hedging demand. Further international diversification and foreign currency hedging by the international investor do not alter this conclusion. Hence, for both domestic and international investors emerging-market stocks are mainly assets for the short run.     

Spillover effects from Euro area monetary policy across Europe: A factor-augmented VAR approach

I analyze spillover effects from a Euro area monetary policy shock to fourteen European countries outside the Euro area. The analysis is based on a factor-augmented VAR model with two blocks, which exploits a large cross-country data set. After a Euro area monetary policy expansion, production increases in most non-Euro area countries, whereas short-term interest rates and financial uncertainty decline. These effects are on average comparable to the responses in the aggregate Euro area. However, the size of spillover effects varies with country characteristics. Spillovers on production are larger in non-Euro area economies with higher trade openness, whereas financial variables react to a higher extent in countries with higher financial integration. Regarding the exchange rate regime, countries with fixed exchange rates show stronger spillovers both in terms of production and interest rates. Finally, prices increase in Western European economies outside the Euro area, but decline or do not respond in Central and Eastern Europe.     

Crossing the lines: The conditional relation between exchange rate exposure and stock returns in emerging and developed markets

This paper examines the importance of exchange rate exposure in the return generating process for a large sample of non-financial firms from 37 countries. We argue that the effect of exchange rate exposure on stock returns is conditional and show evidence of a significant return impact to firm-level currency exposures when conditioning on the exchange rate change. We further show that the realized return to exposure is directly related to the size and sign of the exchange rate change, suggesting fluctuations in exchange rates as a source of time-variation in currency return premia. For the entire sample the return impact ranges from 1.2 to 3.3% per unit of currency exposure, and it is larger for firms in emerging markets compared to developed markets. Overall, the results indicate that foreign exchange rate exposure estimates are economically meaningful, despite the fact that individual time-series results are noisy and many exposures are not statistically significant, and that exchange rate exposure plays an important role in generating cross-sectional return variation. Moreover, we show that the relation between exchange rate exposure and stock returns is more consistent with a cash flow effect than a discount rate effect.     

Systematic consumption risk in currency returns

We sort currencies into portfolios by countries’ past consumption growth. The excess return of the highest- over the lowest-consumption-growth portfolio – our consumption carry factor – compensates for negative returns during world-wide downturns and prices the cross-section of portfolio-sorted and of bilateral currency returns. Empirically, sorting currencies on consumption growth is very similar to sorting currencies on interest rates. We interpret these stylized facts in a habit formation model: sorting currencies on past consumption growth approximates sorting on risk aversion. Low (high) risk-aversion currencies have high (low) interest rates and depreciate (appreciate) in times of global turmoil.     

Time-varying risk premia and the cost of capital: An alternative implication of the Q theory of investment

Evidence suggests that expected excess stock market returns vary over time, and that this variation is much larger than that of expected real interest rates. It follows that a large fraction of the movement in the cost of capital in standard investment models must be attributable to movements in equity risk-premia. In this paper we emphasize that such movements in equity risk premia should have implications not merely for investment today, but also for future investment over long horizons. In this case, predictive variables for excess stock returns over long-horizons are also likely to forecast long-horizon fluctuations in the growth of marginal Q, and therefore investment. We test this implication directly by performing long-horizon forecasting regressions of aggregate investment growth using a variety of predictive variables shown elsewhere to have forecasting power for excess stock market returns.     

Causal Relations Among Stock Returns,Interest Rates,Real Activity,and Inflation

Using a multivariate vector-autoregression (VAR) approach, this paper investigates causal relations and dynamic interactions among asset returns, real activity, and inflation in the postwar United States. Major findings are (1) stock returns appear Granger-causally prior and help explain real activity, (2) with interest rates in the VAR, stock returns explain little variation in inflation, although interest rates explain a substantial fraction of the variation in inflation, and (3) inflation explains little variation in real activity. These findings seem more compatible with Fama (1981) than with Geske and Roll (1983) or with Ram and Spencer (1983) .     

Term Structure of Consumption Risk Premia in the Cross Section of Currency Returns

I relate the downward‐sloping term structure of currency carry returns to compensation for currency exposures to macroeconomic risk embedded in the joint dynamics of U.S. consumption, inflation, nominal interest rate, and their stochastic variance. The interest rate and inflation shocks play a prominent role. Higher yield currencies exhibit higher multiperiod exposures to these shocks. The prices of these risk exposures are positive and sizeable across all investment horizons. The interest rate shock is qualitatively similar to the long‐run risk of Bansal and Yaron.