Knowledge that Transforms

Deviations from covered interest rate parity (CIP) are often linked to limits to arbitrage, yet trading volumes surge during periods of apparent no-arbitrage violations. We show that these distortions stem from constraints on non-U.S. agents’ access to wholesale U.S. dollar markets and reflect a premium for unencumbered synthetic dollar funding: non-U.S. banks substitute secured USD borrowing with FX swaps to meet regulatory requirements. A shadow cost-augmented CIP condition holds, implying no riskless arbitrage. U.S. dealers extract rents on dollar provision while non-U.S. customers bear $10.4 billion in additional annual hedging costs. Our results illustrate how intermediary constraints segment global dollar funding.

This paper quantifies how investors’ portfolio demand responds to price changes at long horizons versus short horizons. Using investor trades – changes in portfolios – at different horizons, I first present reduced-form evidence that elasticities increase significantly over time. I then propose a dynamic demand system via a parsimonious partial-adjustment model that recovers the full term structure of elasticities while mitigating long-horizon identification challenges. The estimates imply that price impacts are three times larger at quarterly horizons than in the long-run equilibrium. The model produces a novel, stock-level measure of long-term reversal that avoids the noise of long-horizon return regressions.