This paper examines the joint determination of deviations in long-term covered interest rate parity and differences in the credit spread of bonds of similar risk but different currency denomination. These two pricing anomalies are highly aligned in both the time series and the cross-section of currencies. The sum of these two pricing deviations—the corporate basis—represents the currency-hedged borrowing cost difference between currency regions and explains up to a third of the variation in the aggregate corporate debt issuance flow. I show that arbitrage aimed at exploiting one type of security anomaly can give rise to the other.

We propose the currency hedging channel that connects countries’ external imbalances to their exchange rate behavior. We present a model in which investors increase their currency hedging during periods of financial distress in proportion to their net foreign asset exposure. This behavior coupled with constrained financial intermediation explains observed relationships between gradually adjusting external imbalances and volatile spot and forward exchange rates. We find empirical support for the hedging channel in both the conditional and unconditional moments of exchange rates, option prices, and countries’ uses of Federal Reserve swap lines.

We derive an options-pricing formula from recursive preferences and estimate rare disaster probability. The new options-pricing formula applies to far out-of-the-money put options on the stock market when disaster risk dominates, the size distribution of disasters follows a power law, and the economy has a representative agent with a constant-relative-risk-aversion utility function. The formula conforms with options data on the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 Index from 1983 to 2018 and for analogous indices for other countries. The disaster probability, inferred from monthly fixed effects, is highly correlated across countries, peaks during the Global Financial Crisis, and forecasts rates of economic growth.

Citation: Greenwood, Robin, Samuel G. Hanson, and Gordon Y. Liao. "Asset Price Dynamics in Partially Segmented Markets." Review of Financial Studies 31, no. 9 (September 2018): 3307–3343. (Internet Appendix Here: http://www.people.hbs.edu/shanson/smc_IA_20170910.pdf.) Link to publisher's version: https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-abstract/31/9/3307/4985215?redirectedFrom=fulltext Keywords: System Shocks, Asset Pricing