← Search

Review of Financial Studies Vol. 34 No. 9 2021

Demand Effects in the FX Forward Market: Micro Evidence from Banks’ Dollar Hedging

Abbassi Puriya1; Falk Bräuning2

1 Deutsche Bundesbank · 2 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract

Using contract-level supervisory data, we show that dollar forward sales by non-U.S. banks that are initiated at the end of a quarter and mature shortly after it concludes trade at higher prices and higher volumes. These effects are driven by banks with large net on-balance-sheet dollar assets that they can hedge around quarter ends by selling dollars forward (increasing off-balance-sheet short positions), which suggests regulatory arbitrage to reduce capital charges for open foreign exchange (FX) exposure. Our results indicate that demand effects related to banks’ management of FX exposure are an important driver of deviations from covered interest rate parity.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhaa123
Volume
34
Issue
9
Pages
4177-4215
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite