IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v84y2017icp88-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unemployment fluctuations and the predictability of currency returns

Author

Listed:
  • Nucera, Federico

Abstract

We investigate whether unemployment fluctuations generate predictability in the cross-section of currency excess returns. We find that currencies with lower growth in the unemployment rate appreciate while currencies with higher growth in the unemployment rate depreciate. As a result, an investment strategy that involves investing in the former and short selling of the latter produces positive and sizable excess returns. Asset pricing tests show that the predictability is not driven by exposure to traditional risk factors such as global equity risk, global foreign exchange volatility risk, and downside risk but is related instead to an idiosyncratic unemployment risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Nucera, Federico, 2017. "Unemployment fluctuations and the predictability of currency returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 88-106.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:84:y:2017:i:c:p:88-106
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2017.07.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426617301668
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2017.07.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Constantinides, George M & Duffie, Darrell, 1996. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 219-240, April.
    2. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    3. Hansen, Lars Peter & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1997. "Assessing Specification Errors in Stochastic Discount Factor Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 557-590, June.
    4. Hoffmann, Mathias & Studer-Suter, Rahel, 2017. "Systematic consumption risk in currency returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 187-208.
    5. Menkhoff, Lukas & Sarno, Lucio & Schmeling, Maik & Schrimpf, Andreas, 2012. "Currency momentum strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 660-684.
    6. Hanno Lustig & Adrien Verdelhan, 2007. "The Cross Section of Foreign Currency Risk Premia and Consumption Growth Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 89-117, March.
    7. Raymond Kan & Guofu Zhou, 2012. "Tests of Mean-Variance Spanning," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 13(1), pages 139-187, May.
    8. Lukas Menkhoff & Lucio Sarno & Maik Schmeling & Andreas Schrimpf, 2012. "Carry Trades and Global Foreign Exchange Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 681-718, April.
    9. Lukas Menkhoff & Lucio Sarno & Maik Schmeling & Andreas Schrimpf, 2017. "Currency Value," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(2), pages 416-441.
    10. Shanken, Jay, 1992. "On the Estimation of Beta-Pricing Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(1), pages 1-33.
    11. Hanno Lustig & Nikolai Roussanov & Adrien Verdelhan, 2011. "Common Risk Factors in Currency Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(11), pages 3731-3777.
    12. Lewellen, Jonathan & Nagel, Stefan & Shanken, Jay, 2010. "A skeptical appraisal of asset pricing tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 175-194, May.
    13. Laurence Ball, 1999. "Aggregate demand and Long-Run Unemployment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 30(2), pages 189-252.
    14. Olivier J. Blanchard & Lawrence H. Summers, 1986. "Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, pages 15-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    16. Bansal, Ravi & Dahlquist, Magnus, 2000. "The forward premium puzzle: different tales from developed and emerging economies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 115-144, June.
    17. Craig Burnside, 2011. "The Cross Section of Foreign Currency Risk Premia and Consumption Growth Risk: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3456-3476, December.
    18. Lettau, Martin & Maggiori, Matteo & Weber, Michael, 2014. "Conditional risk premia in currency markets and other asset classes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 197-225.
    19. Berg, Kimberly A. & Mark, Nelson C., 2018. "Global macro risks in currency excess returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 300-315.
    20. Pasquale Della Corte & Steven J. Riddiough & Lucio Sarno, 2016. "Currency Premia and Global Imbalances," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(8), pages 2161-2193.
    21. Blanchard, Olivier J. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1987. "Hysteresis in unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 288-295.
    22. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    23. Sergei Sarkissian, 2003. "Incomplete Consumption Risk Sharing and Currency Risk Premiums," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(3), pages 983-1005, July.
    24. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bathia, Deven & Demirer, Riza & Gupta, Rangan & Kotzé, Kevin, 2021. "Unemployment fluctuations and currency returns in the United Kingdom: Evidence from over one and a half century of data," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    2. Sudha Mathew & Sheeja Sivaprasad, 2024. "An empirical analysis of corporate sustainability bonds," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 3299-3316, May.
    3. Dahlquist, Magnus & Hasseltoft, Henrik, 2020. "Economic momentum and currency returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 152-167.

    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. Colacito, Riccardo & Riddiough, Steven J. & Sarno, Lucio, 2020. "Business cycles and currency returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(3), pages 659-678.
    2. Jamali, Ibrahim & Yamani, Ehab & Smallwood, Aaron D., 2023. "An investment-based explanation of currency excess returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    3. Fan, Zhenzhen & Londono, Juan M. & Xiao, Xiao, 2022. "Equity tail risk and currency risk premiums," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 484-503.
    4. Liu, Xi & Zhang, Xueyong, 2024. "Geopolitical risk and currency returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    5. Eriksen, Jonas N., 2019. "Cross-sectional return dispersion and currency momentum," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 91-108.
    6. Byrne, Joseph P. & Ibrahim, Boulis Maher & Sakemoto, Ryuta, 2018. "Common information in carry trade risk factors," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 37-47.
    7. Chen, Chih-Nan & Lin, Chien-Hsiu, 2020. "The sources of pricing factors underlying the cross-section of currency returns," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 250-265.
    8. Della Corte, Pasquale & Ramadorai, Tarun & Sarno, Lucio, 2016. "Volatility risk premia and exchange rate predictability," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 21-40.
    9. Aleksejs Krecetovs & Pasquale Della Corte, 2016. "Macro uncertainty and currency premia," 2016 Meeting Papers 624, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Atanasov, Victoria & Nitschka, Thomas, 2014. "Currency excess returns and global downside market risk," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 268-285.
    11. Filippou, Ilias & Taylor, Mark P., 2023. "Forward-Looking Policy Rules and Currency Premia," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(1), pages 449-483, February.
    12. Dahlquist, Magnus & Hasseltoft, Henrik, 2020. "Economic momentum and currency returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 152-167.
    13. Victoria Dobrynskaya, 2014. "Downside Market Risk of Carry Trades," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 18(5), pages 1885-1913.
    14. Victoria Atanasov, 2014. "Common Risk Factors in Equity Markets," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-070/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    15. Fernanda Gonçalves & Giuliano Ferreira & Alex Ferreira & Pedro Scatimburgo, 2022. "Currency returns and systematic risk," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 90(6), pages 609-647, December.
    16. Gurdip Bakshi & Xiaohui Gao & Alberto G. Rossi, 2019. "Understanding the Sources of Risk Underlying the Cross Section of Commodity Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 619-641, February.
    17. Vitaly Orlov, 2018. "Solvency Risk Premia and the Carry Trades," Working Papers on Finance 1802, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    18. Berg, Kimberly A. & Mark, Nelson C., 2018. "Measures of global uncertainty and carry-trade excess returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 212-227.
    19. Ferdinand Dreher & Johannes Gräb & Thomas Kostka, 2020. "From carry trades to curvy trades," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 758-780, March.
    20. Gino Cenedese & Richard Payne & Lucio Sarno & Giorgio Valente, 2016. "What Do Stock Markets Tell Us about Exchange Rates?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(3), pages 1045-1080.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Currency portfolio returns; Unemployment fluctuations; Predictability; Risk-premia; Asset pricing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • F44 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - International Business Cycles
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    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:eee:jbfina:v:84:y:2017:i:c:p:88-106. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    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.