Authors: Tobias Adrian, Erkko Etula, and Hyun Song Shin

We present evidence that the funding liquidity aggregates of U.S. financial intermediaries forecast exchange rate growth—at weekly, monthly, and quarterly horizons, both in-sample and out-of-sample, and for a large set of currencies. We estimate prices of risk using a cross-sectional asset pricing approach and show that U.S. dollar funding liquidity forecasts exchange rates because of its association with time-varying risk premia. We provide a theoretical foundation for a funding liquidity channel in an intertemporal equilibrium pricing model where the “risk appetite” of dollar-funded intermediaries fluctuates with the tightness of their balance sheet constraints. Our empirical evidence shows that this channel is separate from the more familiar “carry trade” channel.