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The U.S. Treasury yield curve: 1961 to the present

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Author Info
Refet S. Gürkaynak
Brian Sack
Jonathan H. Wright

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Abstract

The discount function, which determines the value of all future nominal payments, is the most basic building block of finance and is usually inferred from the Treasury yield curve. It is therefore surprising that researchers and practitioners do not have available to them a long history of high-frequency yield curve estimates. This paper fills that void by making public the Treasury yield curve estimates of the Federal Reserve Board at a daily frequency from 1961 to the present. We use a well-known and simple smoothing method that is shown to fit the data very well. The resulting estimates can be used to compute yields or forward rates for any horizon. We hope that the data, which are posted on the website http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2006 and which will be updated periodically, will provide a benchmark yield curve that will be useful to applied economists.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series Finance and Economics Discussion Series with number 2006-28.

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Date of creation: 2006
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2006-28

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Web page: http://www.federalreserve.gov/
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Related research
Keywords: Treasury bills ; Government securities ; Interest rates;

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This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Mark Fisher & Douglas Nychka & David Zervos, 1995. "Fitting the term structure of interest rates with smoothing splines," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 95-1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  2. Michael J. Fleming, 2000. "The benchmark U.S. Treasury market: recent performance and possible alternatives," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Apr, pages 129-145. [Downloadable!]
  3. Brian Sack, 2000. "Using Treasury STRIPS to measure the yield curve," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-42, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  4. Robert J. Shiller & John Y. Campbell & Kermit L. Schoenholtz, 1983. "Forward Rates and Future Policy: Interpreting the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 667, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Robert R. Bliss, 1996. "Testing term structure estimation methods," Working Paper 96-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. [Downloadable!]
  6. Nelson, Charles R & Siegel, Andrew F, 1987. "Parsimonious Modeling of Yield Curves," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(4), pages 473-89, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Duffee, Gregory R, 1996. " Idiosyncratic Variation of Treasury Bill Yields," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 527-51, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Daniel F. Waggoner, 1997. "Spline methods for extracting interest rate curves from coupon bond prices," Working Paper 97-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. [Downloadable!]
  9. McCulloch, J Huston, 1975. "The Tax-Adjusted Yield Curve," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 30(3), pages 811-30, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Jens Christensen, 2008. "Treasury bond yields and long-run inflation expectations," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Aug 15. [Downloadable!]
  2. David K. Backus & Jonathan H. Wright, 2007. "Cracking the Conundrum," Working Papers 07-22, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Andrew Atkeson & Patrick J. Kehoe, 2008. "On the need for a new approach to analyzing monetary policy," Working Papers 662, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Cristina Arellano & Ananth Ramanarayanan, 2008. "Default and the maturity structure in sovereign bonds," Staff Report 410, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Fousseni Chabi-Yo & Jun Yang, 2007. "A No-Arbitrage Analysis of Macroeconomic Determinants of Term Structures and the Exchange Rate
    ," Working Papers 07-21, Bank of Canada. [Downloadable!]
  6. Stefano Nobili & Gerardo Palazzo, 2008. "A beta based framework for (lower) bond risk premia," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 689, Bank of Italy, Economic Research Department. [Downloadable!]
  7. Stuart M. Turnbull & Jun Yang, 2008. "Default Dependence: The Equity Default Relationship," Working Papers 08-1, Bank of Canada. [Downloadable!]
  8. Leo Krippner, 2008. "A Macroeconomic Foundation for the Nelson and Siegel Class of Yield Curve Models," Research Paper Series 226, Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney. [Downloadable!]
  9. Daniel L. Thornton & Giorgio Valente, 2009. "Revisiting the predictability of bond risk premia," Working Papers 2009-009, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
  10. Stefania D'Amico & Don H. Kim & Min Wei, 2008. "Tips from TIPS: the informational content of Treasury Inflation-Protected Security prices," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-30, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  11. Joshua V. Rosenberg & Samuel Maurer, 2008. "Signal or noise? Implications of the term premium for recession forecasting," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Jul, pages 1-11. [Downloadable!]
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