Countercyclical Currency Risk Premia

78 Pages Posted: 4 Oct 2010 Last revised: 22 May 2022

See all articles by Hanno N. Lustig

Hanno N. Lustig

Stanford Graduate School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Nikolai L. Roussanov

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Adrien Verdelhan

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 2010

Abstract

We describe a novel currency investment strategy, the 'dollar carry trade,' which delivers large excess returns, uncorrelated with the returns on well-known carry trade strategies. Using a no-arbitrage model of exchange rates we show that these excess returns compensate U.S. investors for taking on aggregate risk by shorting the dollar in bad times, when the U.S. price of risk is high. The counter-cyclical variation in risk premia leads to strong return predictability: the average forward discount and U.S. industrial production growth rates forecast up to 25% of the dollar return variation at the one-year horizon. The estimated model implies that the variation in the exposure of U.S. investors to world-wide risk is the key driver of predictability.

Suggested Citation

Lustig, Hanno N. and Roussanov, Nikolai L. and Verdelhan, Adrien and Verdelhan, Adrien, Countercyclical Currency Risk Premia (September 2010). NBER Working Paper No. w16427, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1685732

Hanno N. Lustig (Contact Author)

Stanford Graduate School of Business ( email )

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Nikolai L. Roussanov

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School ( email )

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Adrien Verdelhan

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management ( email )

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