It is well known that returns on foreign exchange rates are not normal and tend to have fat-tailed distributions. Although the precise magnitude of the tail-fatness is crucial for applications such as risk analysis, little consensus exists in this respect due to estimation problems. In this...

Using an extensive Australian sample, we explore two related issues in the context of a default risk asset-pricing factor (DEF) over the business cycle: whether a DEF can explain the size premium in the three-factor Fama–French (FF) model; and whether a DEF has a separate role itself in a...