The Term Structure of Currency Futures' Risk Premia

The use of futures instead of forwards exchange contracts completes the ma-turity spectrum of the correlation between spot yields and the premium. Wefind that the forward premium puzzle appears to be a precrisis phenomenonand is only observed for maturities longer than about 1 month. Differencesin the exposure to risk help to explain cross-sectional spreads in currency ex-cess returns. However, this only applies for medium and longer maturities.Considering that most studies that test the validity of a risk-based approachto currency excess returns focus on short maturity securities, this explainswhy this approach is so often rejected.