McBrady and Schill (2007) attempt to address each of
these shortcomings in their analysis.
In order to rule out
the FC bond issues driven by a natural hedging-based
motive, they focus exclusively on a broad sample of
FC bonds issued by national and regional governments
and domestic development agencies in a broad sample
of 31 countries.
Since these issuers have no foreign currency
assets or cash flows to hedge, the sample selection
essentially rules out the potential natural hedging motive
enabling McBrady and Schill to zero in exclusively
on those issues that are potentially opportunistic in
nature.
Unlike previous studies, they also explicitly consider
an issuer’s ability to choose among a wide variety
of currencies in making their currency denomination decision,
by including bonds issued in each of the six most
common international currencies over the sample period
(the British pound, German mark, French franc, Japanese
yen, Swiss franc, and US dollar).
Finally, they consider
the potential for issuers to attempt to exploit deviations
from both the CIP and UIP.
In other words, they explicitly
consider the possibility that issuers use long-termcurrency swaps to immediately hedge their foreign currency
risk and transform their debt into home currency
liabilities.