• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.231-253
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• 2004

We examine hedge strategies that use Won-dollar futures to hedge the price risk of the Won-dollar exchange rate. We employ the naive hedge model, minimum variance hedge model and bivariate ECT-ARCH(1) model as hedge instruments, and analyze their hedge performances. The sample period covers from January 2, 2001 to December 31, 2002 with sub-samples such as daily, weekly, bi-weekly prices of the Won-dollar futures and cash. The important findings may be summarized as follows. First, there is no significant difference in hedge ratio between the risk minimum variance model and bivariate ECT-ARCH(1) model that controls for the cointegration relationship of the Won-dollar futures and cash. Second, hedge performance of the naive model and minimum variance model with constant hedge ratios is not far behind that of bivariate ECT-ARCH(1) model with time-varying hedge ratios. This results imply that investors are encouraged to use the minimum variance hedge model to hedge Won-dollar exchange rate with Won-dollar futures. Third, hedge performance and effectiveness of each model is also analyzed with respect to hedge period appear to be greater over long than over the short period. This evidence supports the hypothesis that futures prices would have more time to respond to the greater cash price changes over the longer holding period, leading to an improved hedge performance.