Macroeconomists want to understand the effects of fiscal policy on interest rates, while financial economists look for the factors that drive the dynamics of the yield curve. To shed light on both issues, we present an empirical macro-finance model that combines a no-arbitrage affine term structure model with a set of structural restrictions that allow us to identify fiscal policy shocks, and trace the effects of these shocks on the prices of bonds of different maturities. Compared to a standard VAR, this approach has the advantage of incorporating the information embedded in a large cross-section of bond prices. Moreover, the pricing equations provide new ways to assess the model's ability to capture risk preferences and expectations. Our results suggest that (i) government deficits affect long term interest rates: a one percentage point increase in the deficit to GDP ratio, lasting for 3 years, will eventually increase the 10-year rate by 40--50 basis points; (ii) this increase is partly due to higher expected spot rates, and partly due to higher risk premia on long term bonds; and (iii) the fiscal policy shocks account for up to 12% of the variance of forecast errors in bond yields.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. 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.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
11574.
Length: Date of creation: Aug 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11574
Note: AP EFG Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General G0 - Financial Economics - - General
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.:
John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2002.
"Bond Risk Premia,"
NBER Working Papers
9178, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2005.
"Bond Risk Premia,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 138-160, March.
[Downloadable!]
Douglas W. Elmendorf & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1998.
"Government Debt,"
NBER Working Papers
6470, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999.
"Government debt,"
Handbook of Macroeconomics,
in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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.)