scholarly journals Can Yield Curve Inversions Be Predicted?

Author(s):  
Kurt G. Lunsford

An inverted Treasury yield curve—a yield curve where short-term Treasury interest rates are higher than long-term Treasury interest rates—is a good predictor of recessions. Because of this, economists and policymakers often assess the risk of a yield curve inversion when the yield curve is flattening. I study the forecastability of yield curve inversions. Professional forecasters did not predict the beginning of the yield curve inversions prior to the 1990–1991, 2001, and 2008–2009 recessions. In all three cases, professional forecasters failed to predict the magnitude of the rise in short-term interest rates. Prior to the 2008–2009 recession, forecasters also overpredicted long-term interest rates.

Author(s):  
O. Emre Ergungor

Statistical models that estimate 12-month-ahead recession probabilities using the term spread have been around for many years. However, the reliability of the term spread as a predictor may have been affected by short-term interest rates being at zero. At the zero lower bound, long-term yields cannot go too far into negative territory due to the portfolio constraints of institutional investors. Therefore, the yield curve may not invert when it should or as much as it should despite the anticipated path of the economy. I enhance the simple model with two variables that should have predictive power for recessions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominika Ehrenbergerova ◽  
Josef Bajzik ◽  
Tomas Havranek

Several central banks have leaned against the wind in the housing market by increasing the policy rate preemptively to prevent a bubble. Yet the empirical literature provides mixed results on the impact of short-term interest rates on house prices: the estimated semi-elasticities range from -12 to positive values. To assign a pattern to these differences, we collect 1,447 estimates from 31 individual studies that cover 45 countries and 69 years. We then relate the estimates to 39 characteristics of the financial system, business cycle, and estimation approach. Our main results are threefold. First, the mean reported estimate is exaggerated by publication bias, because insignificant results are underreported. Second, omission of important variables (liquidity and long-term rates) likewise exaggerates the effects of short-term rates on house prices. Third, the effects are stronger in countries with more developed mortgage markets and generally later in the cycle when the yield curve is flat and house prices enter an upward spiral.


2006 ◽  
Vol 196 ◽  
pp. 4-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Weale

In the first half of this decade, the world experienced a period of low short and long-term interest rates. Shortterm rates have risen from these low levels, first in Canada and the United Kingdom, then in the United States and finally in the Euro Area. Long-term rates, by contrast, remained low, suggesting that holders of longterm debt expected the rise in short-term rates to be only temporary. Only in the past few months has the apparently anomalous pricing of long-term debt started to disappear. But with interest rates on long-term debt similar to short-term market rates internationally, the market does not yet show that the traditional upwardsloping yield curve and, on this basis, long rates remain depressed. They are also markedly below the levels of two to three years ago.


2021 ◽  
pp. 056943452098827
Author(s):  
Tanweer Akram

Keynes argued that the central bank can influence the long-term interest rate on government bonds and the shape of the yield curve mainly through the short-term interest rate. Several recent empirical studies that examine the dynamics of government bond yields not only substantiate Keynes’s view that the long-term interest rate responds markedly to the short-term interest rate but also have relevance for macroeconomic theory and policy. This article relates Keynes’s discussions of money, the state theory of money, financial markets, investors’ expectations, uncertainty, and liquidity preference to the dynamics of government bond yields for countries with monetary sovereignty. Investors’ psychology, herding behavior in financial markets, and uncertainty about the future reinforce the effects of the short-term interest rate and the central bank’s monetary policy actions on the long-term interest rate. JEL classifications: E12; E40; E43; E50; E58; E60; F30; G10; G12; H62; H63


2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-103
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Aubry ◽  
Pierre Duguay

Abstract In this paper we deal with the financial sector of CANDIDE 1.1. We are concerned with the determination of the short-term interest rate, the term structure equations, and the channels through which monetary policy influences the real sector. The short-term rate is determined by a straightforward application of Keynesian liquidity preference theory. A serious problem arises from the directly estimated reduced form equation, which implies that the demand for high powered money, but not the demand for actual deposits, is a stable function of income and interest rates. The structural equations imply the opposite. In the term structure equations, allowance is made for the smaller variance of the long-term rates, but insufficient explanation is given for their sharper upward trend. This leads to an overstatement of the significance of the U.S. long-term rate that must perform the explanatory role. Moreover a strong structural hierarchy, by which the long Canada rate wags the industrial rate, is imposed without prior testing. In CANDIDE two channels of monetary influence are recognized: the costs of capital and the availability of credit. They affect the business fixed investment and housing sectors. The potential of the personal consumption sector is not recognized, the wealth and real balance effects are bypassed, the credit availability proxy is incorrect, the interest rate used in the real sector is nominal rather than real, and the specification of the housing sector is dubious.


2005 ◽  
Vol 08 (04) ◽  
pp. 687-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. K. Malhotra ◽  
Vivek Bhargava ◽  
Mukesh Chaudhry

Using data from the Treasury versus London Interbank Offer Swap Rates (LIBOR) for October 1987 to June 1998, this paper examines the determinants of swap spreads in the Treasury-LIBOR interest rate swap market. This study hypothesizes Treasury-LIBOR swap spreads as a function of the Treasury rate of comparable maturity, the slope of the yield curve, the volatility of short-term interest rates, a proxy for default risk, and liquidity in the swap market. The study finds that, in the long-run, swap spreads are negatively related to the yield curve slope and liquidity in the swap market. We also find that swap spreads are positively related to the short-term interest rate volatility. In the short-run, swap market's response to higher default risk seems to be higher spread between the bid and offer rates.


2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amado Peirό

AbstractThis paper studies the existence of a world business cycle by examining quarterly and annual comovements in production, prices and interest rates in the three main world economies: Germany, Japan and the US. In accordance with earlier studies, contemporaneous relationships clearly dominate short-term dynamics. The evidence indicates the existence of strong comovements in prices and long-term interest rates, and, to a lesser degree, in GDP and short-term interest rates. They are, however, rather unstable over time.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy BRILLANT

This paper deals with a debate between Hawtrey, Hicks and Keynes concerning the capacity of the central bank to influence the short-term and the long-term rates of interest. Both Hawtrey and Keynes considered the central bank’s ability to influence short-term rates of interest. However, they do not put the same emphasis on the study of the long-term rates of interest. According to Keynes, long-term rates are influenced by future expected short-term rates (1930, 1936), whereas for Hawtrey (1932, 1937, 1938), long-term rates are more dependent on the business cycle. Short-term rates do not have much effect on long-term rates according to Hawtrey. In 1939, Hicks enters the controversy, giving credit to both Hawtrey’s and Keynes’s theories, and also introducing limits to the operations of arbitrage. He thus presented a nuanced view.


2007 ◽  
Vol 201 ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Martin Weale

The July interest rate increase has taken the Bank of England's Base Rate to the highest value for six years. In figure 1 we show the forward estimates for the nominal short-term interest rate taken from the Bank of England's yield curve tables for both government debt and liabilities of commercial banks. These are in effect market forecasts of the short-term rate produced in the past. The graph shows that the market has been taken somewhat by surprise by rising short-term interest rates. Two years ago the market was forecasting a rate of around 4 per cent per annum for July 2007. Nor were the probabilities the market gave to an interest rate of 5.75 per cent per annum very high. Twelve months ago the market in financial options implied that the chance of the rate exceeding 5.66 per cent per annum was only 15 per cent. Even in January of this year the chance of it reaching its current level or higher was put at less than 25 per cent. The National Institute cannot claim a substantially better record at forecasting interest rates. We normally use market expectations, as calculated from the yield curve, to provide exogenous forecasts as input into our model in the short term.


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