IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3861.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On Biases in the Measurement of Foreign Exchange Risk Premiums

Author

Listed:
  • Geert Bekaert
  • Robert J. Hodrick

Abstract

The hypothesis that the forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot rate has been consistently rejected in recent empirical studies. This paper examines several sources of measurement error and misspecification that might induce biases in such studies. Although previous inferences are shown to be robust to a failure to construct true returns and to omitted variable bias arising from conditional heteroskedasticity in spot rates, we show that the parameters were not stable over the 1975-1989 sample period. Estimation that allows for endogenous regime shifts in the parameters demonstrates that deviations from unbiasedness were more severe in the 1980's.

Suggested Citation

  • Geert Bekaert & Robert J. Hodrick, 1991. "On Biases in the Measurement of Foreign Exchange Risk Premiums," NBER Working Papers 3861, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3861
    Note: ITI AP IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3861.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    2. Hodrick, Robert J. & Srivastava, Sanjay, 1984. "An investigation of risk and return in forward foreign exchange," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 5-29, April.
    3. Sibert, Anne, 1989. "The Risk Premium in the Foreign Exchange Market," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 21(1), pages 49-65, February.
    4. Hodrick, Robert J., 1989. "Risk, uncertainty, and exchange rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 433-459, May.
    5. Engel, Charles, 1992. "On the foreign exchange risk premium in a general equilibrium model," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3-4), pages 305-319, May.
    6. Cornell, Bradford, 1989. "The impact of data errors on measurement of the foreign exchange risk premium," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 147-157, March.
    7. Baillie, Richard T. & Bollerslev, Tim, 1990. "A multivariate generalized ARCH approach to modeling risk premia in forward foreign exchange rate markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 309-324, September.
    8. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1982. "Interest rates and currency prices in a two-country world," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 335-359.
    9. Ruud, Paul A., 1991. "Extensions of estimation methods using the EM algorithm," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 305-341, September.
    10. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    11. Frenkel, Jacob A. & Razin, Assaf, 1980. "Stochastic prices and tests of efficiency of foreign exchange markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 165-170.
    12. Ghysels, Eric & Hall, Alastair, 1990. "Are consumption-based intertemporal capital asset pricing models structural?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1-2), pages 121-139.
    13. Hamilton, James D., 1990. "Analysis of time series subject to changes in regime," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1-2), pages 39-70.
    14. Gregory, Allan W. & McCurdy, Thomas H., 1984. "Testing the unbiasedness hypothesis in the forward foreign exchange market: A specification analysis," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 357-368, December.
    15. Bollerslev, Tim, 1990. "Modelling the Coherence in Short-run Nominal Exchange Rates: A Multivariate Generalized ARCH Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(3), pages 498-505, August.
    16. Fama, Eugene F., 1984. "Forward and spot exchange rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 319-338, November.
    17. Engle, Robert F, 1982. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity with Estimates of the Variance of United Kingdom Inflation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 987-1007, July.
    18. Domowitz, Ian & Hakkio, Craig S., 1985. "Conditional variance and the risk premium in the foreign exchange market," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1-2), pages 47-66, August.
    19. Froot, Kenneth A & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Foreign Exchange," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 179-192, Summer.
    20. Bilson, John F O, 1981. "The "Speculative Efficiency" Hypothesis," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(3), pages 435-451, July.
    21. Lars Peter Hansen & Robert J. Hodrick, 1983. "Risk Averse Speculation in the Forward Foreign Exchange Market: An Econometric Analysis of Linear Models," NBER Chapters, in: Exchange Rates and International Macroeconomics, pages 113-152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Korajczyk, Robert A. & Viallet, Claude J., 1992. "Equity risk premia and the pricing of foreign exchange risk," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3-4), pages 199-219, November.
    23. Canova, Fabio & Marrinan, Jane, 1993. "Profits, risk, and uncertainty in foreign exchange markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 259-286, November.
    24. Bossaerts, Peter & Hillion, Pierre, 1991. "Market Microstructure Effects of Government Intervention in the Foreign Exchange Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(3), pages 513-541.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Engel, Charles, 1996. "The forward discount anomaly and the risk premium: A survey of recent evidence," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 123-192, June.
    2. Sonia Pangusión Espinosa., "undated". "Testing Uncovered Interest Rate Parity: The Spanish case," Studies on the Spanish Economy 128, FEDEA.
    3. Lewis, Karen K., 1995. "Puzzles in international financial markets," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 37, pages 1913-1971, Elsevier.
    4. Gregory, Allan W. & McCurdy, Thomas H., 1986. "The unbiasedness hypothesis in the forward foreign exchange market: A specification analysis with application to France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and West Germany," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 365-381, April.
    5. Simpson, Marc W. & Grossmann, Axel, 2014. "An examination of the forward prediction error of U.S. dollar exchange rates and how they are related to bid-ask spreads, purchasing power parity disequilibria, and forward premium asymmetry," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 221-238.
    6. Tai, Chu-Sheng, 1999. "Time-varying risk premia in foreign exchange and equity markets: evidence from Asia-Pacific countries," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 9(3-4), pages 291-316, November.
    7. Jorge Andrés Muñoz Mendoza & Carmen Lissette Veloso Ramos & Sandra María Sepúlveda Yelpo & Carlos Leandro Delgado Fuentealba & Edinson Edgardo Cornejo Saavedra, 2022. "Exchange Markets and Stock Markets Integration in Latin-America," Remef - Revista Mexicana de Economía y Finanzas Nueva Época REMEF (The Mexican Journal of Economics and Finance), Instituto Mexicano de Ejecutivos de Finanzas, IMEF, vol. 17(3), pages 1-24, Julio - S.
    8. Hu, Xiaoqiang, 1997. "Macroeconomic uncertainty and the risk premium in the foreign exchange market1," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 699-718, September.
    9. Canova, Fabio & Marrinan, Jane, 1995. "Predicting excess returns in financial markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 35-69, January.
    10. Grossmann, Axel & Simpson, Marc W., 2015. "Bid-ask spreads, deviations from PPP and the forward prediction error: The case of the British pound and the euro," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 124-139.
    11. Stuart Landon & Constance E. Smith, 2003. "The Risk Premium, Exchange Rate Expectations, and the Forward Exchange Rate: Estimates for the Yen–Dollar Rate," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 144-158, February.
    12. Burton Hollifield & Armir Yaron, "undated". "The Foreign Exchange Risk Premium: Real and Nominal Factors," GSIA Working Papers 2001-E13, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    13. Tim Bollerslev & Ray Y. Chou & Narayanan Jayaraman & Kenneth F. Kroner - L, 1991. "es modéles ARCH en finance : un point sur la théorie et les résultats empiriques," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 24, pages 1-59.
    14. Paul D. McNelis & G.C. Lim, 1998. "Parameterizing Currency Risk in the EMS: The Irish Pound and Spanish Peseta against the German Mark," International Finance 9805001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Tai, Chu-Sheng, 2001. "A multivariate GARCH in mean approach to testing uncovered interest parity: evidence from Asia-Pacific foreign exchange markets," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 441-460.
    16. Ross Levine, 1988. "The forward exchange rate bias: a new explanation," International Finance Discussion Papers 338, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Graham Elliott & Takatoshi Ito, 1995. "Heterogeneous Expectations and Tests of Efficiency in the Yen/Dollar Forward Foreign Exchange Rate Market," NBER Working Papers 5376, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Elliott, Graham & Ito, Takatoshi, 1999. "Heterogeneous expectations and tests of efficiency in the yen/dollar forward exchange rate market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 435-456, April.
    19. Juan Jose Echavarria & Mauricio Villamizar-Villegas, 2016. "Great expectations? evidence from Colombia’s exchange rate survey," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 25(1), pages 1-27, December.
    20. Bernard Dumas, 1993. "Partial- vs general-equilibrium models of the international capital market," Working Papers hal-00610766, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3861. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.