In this paper we empirically examine the sources of the volatility of the foreign exchange risk premia. Using a nonlinear structural Vector Autoregression (VAR) model based on no-arbitrage condition to identify various macroeconomic shocks and the foreign exchange risk premia, we find that more than 80% of the volatilities of the currency risk premia can be accounted for by the standard macroeconomic shocks that drive output and inflation. By explicitly modelling the currency risk premia in the VAR system, we also offer a potential reconciliation for the seemingly contradicting observations from the previous VAR analysis of the exchange rate “overshooting” behavior under exogenous monetary innovations.
