currency bargains. Savings of this magnitude, which can
be achieved without incurring foreign currency risk, appear
to be large enough to motivate a corporate CFO who
needs to raise funds somewhere to engage in opportunistic
issuance. On the other hand, they also appear
too small to offset the expenses incurred in any type of
‘round-trip’ covered interest arbitrage transaction. Interestingly,
theMSM also find that theirmeasures of covered
and uncovered currency bargains all tend to systematically
decline after periods of relatively high issuance.
This evidence provides further evidence that suggests
that internationally active bond issuers, rather than specialist
arbitrageurs, are the true one-way arbitrageurs
who enforce IRP in equilibrium.