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The Case of the Negative Nominal Interest Rates: New Estimates of the Term Structure of Interest Rates During the Great Depression

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Stephen G. Cecchetti

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Abstract

During the 1930s and early 1940s U.S. Treasury bonds and notes had negative nominal yields as they approached maturity. But since an investor can always hold cash, this is impossible. Any bond must have a positive nominal yield. This paper poses a resolution to this puzzle: in addition to making coupon payments, Treasury securities were options that gave the owner the right to buy a new security on a future date. The paper proposes a method for valuing this 'exchange privilege' and computing the yield to the coupon bearing component of these composite bond/options. The case of the negative nominal interest rates demonstrates that the construction of accurate data requires close examination of the institutional environment, even when studying financial markets. The corrected bond and note yields are used to calculate new estimates of the term structure of interest rates from 1929 to 1949. These new data allow one to follow changes in the both the level and the shape of the yield curve during the Great Depression.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 2472.

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Date of creation: Feb 1989
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Publication status: published as Cecchetti, Stephen G., "The Case of the Negative Nominal Interest Rates: New Estimates of the Term Structure of Interest Rates During the Great Depression," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 96, No. 6, December 1988.
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2472

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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. McCulloch, J Huston, 1971. "Measuring the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 19-31, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Brown, Stephen J & Dybvig, Philip H, 1986. " The Empirical Implications of the Cox, Ingersoll, Ross Theory of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(3), pages 617-30, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in Propagation of the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 257-76, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Cox, John C & Ingersoll, Jonathan E, Jr & Ross, Stephen A, 1985. "A Theory of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(2), pages 385-407, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Hamilton, James D., 1987. "Monetary factors in the great depression," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 145-169, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Shea, Gary S, 1985. " Interest Rate Term Structure Estimation with Exponential Splines: A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 319-25, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Mankiw, N Gregory & Miron, Jeffrey A, 1986. "The Changing Behavior of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 211-28, May. [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. J. Peter Ferderer, 1999. "Credibility of the Interwar Gold Standard, Uncertainty, and the Great Depression," Macroeconomics 9907002, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
  2. R. Kato & S. Nishiyama, 2002. "Optimal Monetary Policy When Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero," Computing in Economics and Finance 2002 8, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Ruge-Murcia, F.J., 2002. "Some Implications of the Zero Lower Bound on Interest Rates for the Term Structure and Monetary Policy," Cahiers de recherche 06-2002, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Marvin Goodfriend, 2000. "Overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy," Working Paper 00-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Basma Bekdache & Christopher F. Baum, 1997. "The Ex Ante Predictive Accuracy of Alternative Models of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 372, Boston College Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Kenneth D. Garbade, 2004. "The institutionalization of treasury note and bond auctions, 1970-75," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue May, pages 29-45. [Downloadable!]
  7. P. A. Tinsley, 1998. "Short rate expectations, term premiums, and central bank use of derivatives to reduce policy uncertainty," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-14, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  8. James Clouse & Dale Henderson & Athanasios Orphanides & David Small & Peter Tinsley, 2000. "Monetary policy when the nominal short-term interest rate is zero," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-51, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  9. Stephen G. Cecchetti, 1989. "Prices during the Great Depression: Was the Deflation of 1930-32 really unanticipated?," NBER Working Papers 3174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  10. W. Douglas McMillin & James S. Fackler, . "Estimating the Inflation-Output Variability Frontier with Inflation Targeting: A VAR Approach," Departmental Working Papers 2006-17, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  11. Gauti B. Eggertsson, 2005. "Great expectations and the end of the depression," Staff Reports 234, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  12. Don H. Kim, 2008. "Zero bound, option-implied PDFs, and term structure models," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-31, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  13. C.A. Ullersma, 2001. "The Zero Lower Bound on Nominal Interest Rates and Monetary Policy Effectiveness: a Survey," MEB Series (discontinued) 2001-9, Netherlands Central Bank, Monetary and Economic Policy Department. [Downloadable!]
  14. Jun Nagayasu, 2003. "The Term Structure of Interest Rates and Monetary Policy During A Zero-Interest-Rate Period," IMF Working Papers 03/208, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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