Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

News shocks and the slope of the term structure of interest rates

Contents:

Author Info

  • André Kurmann
  • Christopher Otrok

Abstract

We adopt a statistical approach to identify the shocks that explain most of the fluctuations of the slope of the term structure of interest rates. We find that one single shock can explain the majority of all unpredictable movements in the slope over a 10-year forecast horizon. Impulse response functions lead us to interpret this shock as news about future total factor productivity (TFP). We confirm this interpretation formally by identifying a TFP news shock following recent work by Barsky and Sims (2011). By showing that the 'slope shock' and the 'TFP news shock' are closely related, we provide a new explanation for the relationship between the slope of the term structure and macroeconomic fundamentals and for why the yield curve is one of the most reliable predictors of future economic growth. Our results also provide a new empirical benchmark for structural models at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-011.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in its series Working Papers with number 2012-011.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2012-011

Contact details of provider:
Postal: P.O. Box 442, St. Louis, MO 63166
Fax: (314)444-8753
Web page: http://www.stlouisfed.org/
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Email:

Related research

Keywords: Interest rates ; Vector autoregression;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Faust, Jon & Leeper, Eric M, 1997. "When Do Long-Run Identifying Restrictions Give Reliable Results?," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(3), pages 345-53, July.
  2. Miles S. Kimball & John G. Fernald & Susanto Basu, 2006. "Are Technology Improvements Contractionary?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1418-1448, December.
  3. Glenn Rudebusch & Eric Swanson, 2008. "The bond premium in a DSGE model with long-run real and nominal risks," Working Paper Series 2008-31, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  4. Francis X. Diebold & Canlin Li, 2004. "Forecasting the Term Structure of Government Bond Yields," CFS Working Paper Series 2004/09, Center for Financial Studies.
  5. Clarida, Richard & Galí, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 2139, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  6. Geert Bekaert & Seonghoon Cho & Antonio Moreno, 2005. "New-Keynesian Macroeconomics and the Term Structure," NBER Working Papers 11340, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2002. "Bond Risk Premia," NBER Working Papers 9178, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Estrella, Arturo & Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1991. " The Term Structure as a Predictor of Real Economic Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 555-76, June.
  9. Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo, 2006. "Can News About the Future Drive the Business Cycle?," NBER Working Papers 12537, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Ang, Andrew & Piazzesi, Monika, 2003. "A no-arbitrage vector autoregression of term structure dynamics with macroeconomic and latent variables," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 745-787, May.
  11. David Altig & Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Jesper Linde, 2011. "Firm-Specific Capital, Nominal Rigidities and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 225-247, April.
  12. Donaldson, John B. & Johnsen, Thore & Mehra, Rajnish, 1990. "On the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 14(3-4), pages 571-596, October.
  13. Smets, Frank & Wouters, Rafael, 2007. "Shocks and Frictions in US Business Cycles: A Bayesian DSGE Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 6112, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  14. Campbell, John Y & Shiller, Robert J, 1987. "Cointegration and Tests of Present Value Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1062-88, October.
  15. Neville Francis & Michael T. Owyang & Jennifer E. Roush, 2005. "A flexible finite-horizon identification of technology shocks," International Finance Discussion Papers 832, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  16. Rudebusch, Glenn D. & Swanson, Eric T., 2008. "Examining the bond premium puzzle with a DSGE model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(Supplemen), pages S111-S126, October.
  17. Monika Piazzesi & Martin Schneider, 2007. "Equilibrium Yield Curves," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2006, Volume 21, pages 389-472 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  18. Evans, Charles L. & Marshall, David A., 2007. "Economic determinants of the nominal treasury yield curve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 1986-2003, October.
  19. Susanto Basu & John G. Fernald, 1996. "Returns to scale in U.S. production: estimates and implications," International Finance Discussion Papers 546, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  20. Wachter, Jessica A., 2006. "A consumption-based model of the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 365-399, February.
  21. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2001. "Nominal rigidities and the dynamic effects of a shock to monetary policy," Working Paper Series WP-01-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
  22. Qiang Dai & Kenneth J. Singleton, 2000. "Specification Analysis of Affine Term Structure Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 1943-1978, October.
  23. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2005. "Monetary policy inertia: fact or fiction?," Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory 2005-19, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  24. Neville Francis & Michael T. Owyang & Jennifer E. Roush & Riccardo DiCecio, 2010. "A flexible finite-horizon alternative to long-run restrictions with an application to technology shock," Working Papers 2005-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  25. Tao Wu & Glenn Rudebusch, 2004. "A Macro-Finance Model of the Term Structure, Monetary Policy, and the Economy," 2004 Meeting Papers 104, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  26. Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2006. "The Dynamic Effects of Neutral and Investment-Specific Technology Shocks," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(3), pages 413-451, June.
  27. Robrt G. King & André Kurmann, 2002. "Expectations and the term structure of interest rates : evidence and implications," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Fall, pages 49-95.
  28. Qiang Dai & Thomas Philippon, 2005. "Fiscal Policy and the Term Structure of Interest Rates," NBER Working Papers 11574, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  29. Julio J. Rotemberg, 2003. "Stochastic Technical Progress, Smooth Trends, and Nearly Distinct Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1543-1559, December.
  30. Robert Barsky, 2010. "News Shocks," 2010 Meeting Papers 95, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  31. Francis X. Diebold & Glenn D. Rudebusch & S. Boragan Aruoba, 2004. "The Macroeconomy and the Yield Curve: A Dynamic Latent Factor Approach," NBER Working Papers 10616, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  32. Athanasios Orphanides, 2003. "Historical monetary policy analysis and the Taylor rule," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-36, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  33. De Graeve, Ferre & Emiris, Marina & Wouters, Raf, 2009. "A structural decomposition of the US yield curve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 545-559, May.
  34. Darrell Duffie & Rui Kan, 1996. "A Yield-Factor Model Of Interest Rates," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(4), pages 379-406.
  35. Andrew Ang & Monika Piazzesi & Min Wei, 2003. "What does the yield curve tell us about GDP growth?," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Mar.
  36. den Haan, Wouter J., 1995. "The term structure of interest rates in real and monetary economies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(5-7), pages 909-940.
  37. Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "Bond Yields and the Federal Reserve," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 311-344, April.
  38. Douglas Gollin, 2002. "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 458-474, April.
  39. DiCecio, Riccardo, 2009. "Sticky wages and sectoral labor comovement," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 538-553, March.
  40. Tao Wu & Glenn Rudebusch, 2003. "Macroeconomics and the Yield Curve," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 206, Society for Computational Economics.
  41. Knez, Peter J & Litterman, Robert & Scheinkman, Jose Alexandre, 1994. " Explorations into Factors Explaining Money Market Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1861-82, December.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. News Shocks and the Slope of the Term Structure of Interest Rates
    by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2010-04-18 17:23:43
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Lambertini, Luisa & Mendicino, Caterina & Punzi, Maria Teresa, 2010. "Expectations-Driven Cycles in the Housing Market," MPRA Paper 26128, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Görtz, Christoph & Tsoukalas, John D., 2012. "News and Financial Intermediation in Aggregate and Sectoral Fluctuations," Dynare Working Papers 12, CEPREMAP.
  3. repec:pra:mprapa:38985 is not listed on IDEAS
  4. Sandra Gomes & Caterina Mendicino, 2011. "Housing Market Dynamics: Any News?," Working Papers w201121, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
  5. Barsky, Robert B. & Sims, Eric R., 2011. "News shocks and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 273-289.
  6. Cristian Badarinza & Emil Margaritov, 2011. "News and policy foresight in a macro-finance model of the US," Working Paper Series 1313, European Central Bank.
  7. Virginia Queijo von Heideken & Ferre De Graeve, 2012. "Fiscal policy in contemporary DSGE models," 2012 Meeting Papers 74, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  8. Matsumoto, Akito & Cova, Pietro & Pisani, Massimiliano & Rebucci, Alessandro, 2011. "News shocks and asset price volatility in general equilibrium," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 2132-2149.
  9. William T. Gavin & Benjamin D. Keen & Michael R. Pakko, 2012. "Taylor-type rules and total factor productivity," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 41-64.
  10. Deokwoo Nam & Jian Wang, 2012. "Are predictable improvements in TFP contractionary or expansionary? implications from sectoral TFP," Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper 114, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2012-011

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Diane Rosenberger).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.