Evolving macroeconomic perceptions and the term structure of interest rates

Athanasios Orphanides and Min Wei

No 2010-01, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: We explore the role of evolving beliefs regarding the structure of the macroeconomy in improving our understanding of the term structure of interest rates within the context of a simple macro-finance model. Using quarterly vintages of real-time data and survey forecasts for the United States over the past 40 years, we show that a recursively estimated VAR on real GDP growth, inflation and the nominal short-term interest generates predictions that are more consistent with survey forecasts than a benchmark fixed-coefficient counterpart. We then estimate a simple term structure model under the assumption that the investors' risk attitude is driven by near-term expectations of the three state variables. When we allow for evolving beliefs about the macroeconomy, the resulting term structure model provides a better fit to the cross section of yields than the benchmark model, especially at longer maturities, and exhibits better performance in out-of-sample predictions of future yield movements.

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Econometric models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Evolving macroeconomic perceptions and the term structure of interest rates (2012)
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