Pricing of the currency risk in the Canadian equity market

• Monthly data is used to examine exchange rate risk pricing in Canada.
• Exchange rate risk is priced in the Canadian equity market.
• Local and world market risk is also priced in the Canadian equity market.
• Risk pricing is found to be time-varying.
• The Canadian equity market is partially segmented.

Based on a three-factor international capital asset pricing model, we examine whether the world market, the local market and the currency risks are priced in the Canadian equity market. The analysis presented in this paper is based on data collected from 2003 to 2010. As the dataset also includes the period of global financial crisis, we examine the issue of risk pricing in the full sample as well as in before and after global financial crisis periods. Unlike most existing studies, the empirical results presented in this paper are based on (i) the quasi maximum likelihood estimation (QMLE) based multivariate GARCH-in-Mean specification and (ii) the generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques. Our empirical analysis based on weekly data on 58 largest Canadian firms indicates that the currency as well as the local and the world market risks are priced in the Canadian equity market. This result holds for all exchange currency rates proxies and in all sample periods. We find that the price of the world market, the local market and the currency risks is time-varying and the Canadian equity market is partially segmented.

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