\"Peso problem\" explanations for term structure anomalies

Geert Bekaert, Robert Hodrick () and David Marshall

No WP-97-07, Working Paper Series, Issues in Financial Regulation from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: We examine the empirical evidence on the expectation hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany using the Campbell-Shiller (1991) regressions and a vector-autoregressive methodology. We argue that anomalies in the U.S. term structure, documented by Campbell and Shiller (1991), may be due to a generalized peso problem in which a high-interest rate regime occurred less frequently in the sample of U.S. data than was rationally anticipated. We formalize this idea as a regime-switching model of short-term interest rates estimated with data from seven countries. Technically, this model extends recent research on regime-switching models with state-dependent transitions to a cross-sectional setting. Use of the small sample distributions generated by regime-switching model for inference considerably weakens the evidence against the expectations hypothesis, but it remains somewhat implausible that our data-generating process produced the U.S. data. However, a model that combines moderate time-variation in term premiums with peso-problem effects is largely consistent with term-structure data from the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

Keywords: Interest rates; Econometric models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Peso problem explanations for term structure anomalies (2001)
Working Paper: "Peso Problem" Explanations for Term Structure Anomalies (1997)
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