The Foreign Exchange Risk Premium: Real and Nominal Factors

This paper attempts to identify and isolate the channels by which inflation shocks effect the predictable returns available from currency speculation. We apply a general no--arbitrage based model to decompose the risk premium into inflation and real risk and their interactions. Using two different empirical methods to identify these components, we find that virtually none of the predictable variation in returns from currency speculation can be explained empirically by either inflation risk or the relationship between inflation and real risks. Our results imply that for monetary policy to have significant effects on the risk--premia for currency speculation, monetary policy must have little effect on inflation risk, the relationship between real risk and inflation risk, and instead must mainly impact real exchange rate risk.