Download or read book The Risk Premium Implicit in Currency Options written by Dajiang Guo and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper provides an empirical investigation of the variance process and the market price of variance risk implied in the foreign currency options market. There are three principal contributions. First, the parameters of Heston's (1993) mean-reverting square root stochastic volatility model are estimated using dollar/mark option prices from 1987 to 1992. Second, it is shown that these quot;impliedquot; parameters can be combined with historical moments of the dollar/mark exchange rate to deduce an estimate of the market price of variance risk. These estimates are found to be nonzero, time varying, and of sufficient magnitude to imply that the compensation for variance risk is a significant component of the risk premia in the currency market. Finally, the paper illustrates how to estimate the market expectation of future variance. This approach is useful in constructing the term structure of implied variances, in enhancing hedging strategies, and in predicting future variances.