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

Abstract

I quantify the risk-return relationship in the foreign-exchange (FX) market across different countries and investment horizons by focusing on the role of multiple sources of consumption risk. I estimate a flexible structural model of the joint dynamics of US aggregate consumption, inflation, nominal yield, and stochastic variance with cross-equation restrictions implied by recursive preferences. I identify four sources of consumption risk: short-run, long-run, inflation, and variance shocks. The long-run consumption risk plays a prominent role in the FX market: it contributes to the spread in returns between high and low interest rate currencies across multiple investment horizons from one to five quarters. The short-run consumption risk affects currencies only at the quarterly horizon, where it explains 40% of the spread. The difference in returns between high and low yield currencies disappears for horizons longer than four quarters.