Essays on the Term Structure of Interest Rates
Essays on the Term Structure of Interest Rates

Author: Nisha Aroskar

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Abstract: This dissertation contributes to the study of the term structure of interest rates by addressing some of the gaps in this literature. The term structure is an important channel of monetary transmission. It also contains information about the intertemporal choices made by economic agents. The expectations Hypothesis is the primary explanation in economics that links short term interest rates to long term interest rates. In the first essay I extend the literature by examining the expectations hypothesis in the newly developed financial markets. I find that the expectations theory is not rejected in these markets. This evidence is in sharp contrast to the evidence earlier presented for industrialized countries. Further, contrary to the simple expectations theory, the term premium has high persistence, which is reflected in significantly autoregressive error terms. The evidence also supports the longstanding suggestion that the term premium could be related to the liquidity in the economy. The next essay investigates the forecasting ability of the term spread for future output growth. There appears to be a sharp decline in the predictive power of the term spread in countries that have adopted monetary policy with a stronger response to inflation. To explore the underlying economic reasons for these findings, I explicitly model the information content of the term spread for future output growth based on a structural model. Model calibrations suggest that the forecasting ability of the term spread changes with a change in the persistence and the variance of the underlying economic shocks and in the monetary policy preferences. The last essay focuses on the term structure as a link between short term and long term interest rates in macroeconomic models. I integrate the New Keynesian model and the model of the term structure based on the Intertemporal Consumption Asset Pricing Model. This is a more plausible description of the economy compared to the earlier models. In this model, output responds to an interest rate that includes a time varying term premium which, in turn is associated with economic agents expectations about the future economic variables. Empirical results provide confidence for future research in this direction.

Anticipated Monetary Policy and the Dynamic Behaviour of the Term Structure of Interest Rates
Anticipated Monetary Policy and the Dynamic Behaviour of the Term Structure of Interest Rates

Author: Jarkko P. Jääskelä

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 39

ISBN-13:

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This paper investigates the measurement of anticipated interest rate policy and the effects of these expectations on the term structure of nominal interest rates. It is shown that, under the expectations hypothesis, the level of long-term interest rates depends on three factors: the level of the monetary policy interest rate, ie the steering rate; the spread between the market interest rate and the steering rate; and market expectations of the next steering rate change. The theoretical model builds on the assumption that market participants have only imperfect knowledge of the mechanism whereby changes in the steering rate are determined. As a consequence, expectations formation, although realistic, need not be entirely rational. Steering rate changes take the form of discrete jumps and occur infrequently on a daily scale. Given these assumptions, discussion of the determination of the term structure is related to the literature on uncertainty about monetary policy regimes and small samples, ie peso problems. Empirical analysis based on Nelson-Siegel estimates of the daily yield curves in Finland in the period 1 January 1993 to 31 October 1997 complements the theoretical discussion. The observed differences between estimated market expectations and actual tender rate changes are quite large in the sample, particularly for the longer maturities. The approach applied in this study is promising, not only in the sense of potentially providing estimates of market expectations concerning future discrete changes in monetary policy interest rates but also in the sense of its apparent potential in accounting for the often reported poor empirical performance of the expectations hypothesis.

The Expectations Theory of the Term Structure of Interest Rates and Monetary Policy
The Expectations Theory of the Term Structure of Interest Rates and Monetary Policy

Author: María Isabel Martínez Serna

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13:

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The disparate evidence obtained by the empirical literature of the expectations theory of the term structure of interest rates has been interpreted in different ways. One explanation stems from the findings of Mankiw and Miron (1986) who observed that the term spread in the U.S. had substantial predictive power in line with the expectations theory before the founding of the Federal Reserve in 1914. Afterwards, the Fed's commitment to stabilising interest rates caused changes in short rates to become unpredictable on the basis of the spread. Consequently, these authors argue that monetary policy regime, and the extent to which it involves smoothing interest rates, determines the performance of the expectations theory.The argument of Mankiw and Miron has been extended and formalised by McCallum (1994), who develops a model of the interaction between the expectations theory, a time-varying autoregressive term premium, and an interest rate smoothing monetary policy combined with the use of the spread as an indicator. Kugler (1994) and Boero and Torricelli (1998) derive an exact solution to the McCallum model. Nevertheless, both of them limit their theoretical contribution to the case of one-period short rate. These two articles, together with Hsu and Kugler (1997), constitute the empirical applications of the model. All three conclude that the model is able to explain the results from standard tests of the expectations theory. The present research is intended to complete the existing theoretical and empirical literature about the McCallum model. Thus, we derive a generalisation of the exact solution of the model for any pair of maturities and, on the basis of the derived solution, we test the McCallum model for a wider range of maturities (all the above cited studies only use 1-month and 3-month interest rates) and for the Spanish term structure, to which the model has not yet been applied.

Changes in the Relationship Between the Long-Term Interest Rate and its Determinants
Changes in the Relationship Between the Long-Term Interest Rate and its Determinants

Author: Mr.William Lee

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 1994-10-01

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 145185465X

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This paper assesses the relative importance of alternative explanations for the rise in long-term interest rates in the United States from October 1993 to April 1994. Standard econometric models of the term structure are shown to have a structural break in the early 1980s. An important reason for this change in the traditional term structure relationship appears to be an increase in the responsiveness of long-term rates to changes in the stance of monetary policy. Augmented term structure models that explicitly incorporate the role of monetary policy in determining the level of long-term rates are then constructed. These models track variations in the long-term rate better than traditional term structure models, but still leave a significant fraction of the recent increase in long-term rates unexplained.