IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3751.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Indicator of Future Inflation Extracted From the Steepness of the Interest Rate Yield Curve Along Its Entire Length

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey A. Frankel
  • Cara S. Lown

Abstract

It is often suggested that the slope of the term structure of interest rates contains information about the expected future path of inflation. Mishkin (1990) has recently shown that the spread between the 12-month and 3-month interest rates helps to predict the difference between the 12-month and 3-month inflation rates. His approach however, lacks a theoretical foundation, other than the (rejected) hypothesis that the real interest rate is constant. This paper applies a simple existing theoretical framework, which allows the real interest rate to vary in the short run but converge to a constant in the long run, to the problem of predicting the inflation spread. It is shown that the appropriate indicator of expected inflation can make use of the entire length of the yield curve, in particular by estimating the steepness of a specific nonlinear transformation of the curve, rather than being restricted to a spread between two points. The resulting indicator, besides having a firmer theoretical foundation does a relatively good job of predicting the inflation rate over the period 1960 to 1988.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey A. Frankel & Cara S. Lown, 1991. "An Indicator of Future Inflation Extracted From the Steepness of the Interest Rate Yield Curve Along Its Entire Length," NBER Working Papers 3751, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3751
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3751.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frederic S. Mishkin, 1989. "A Multi-Country Study of the Information in the Term Structure about Future Inflation," NBER Working Papers 3125, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. N. Gregory Mankiw & Lawrence H. Summers, 1984. "Do Long-Term Interest Rates Overreact to Short-Term Interest Rates?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 15(1), pages 223-248.
    3. Froot, Kenneth A, 1989. " New Hope for the Expectations Hypothesis of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(2), pages 283-305, June.
    4. Mishkin, Frederic S., 1990. "What does the term structure tell us about future inflation?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 77-95, January.
    5. Frankel, Jeffrey A, 1982. "A Technique for Extracting a Measure of Expected Inflation from the Interest Rate Term Structure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(1), pages 135-142, February.
    6. Jorion, Philippe & Mishkin, Frederic, 1991. "A multicountry comparison of term-structure forecasts at long horizons," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 59-80, March.
    7. Mishkin, Frederic S., 1990. "Does correcting for heteroscedasticity help?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 351-356, December.
    8. Fama, Eugene F., 1990. "Term-structure forecasts of interest rates, inflation and real returns," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 59-76, January.
    9. Shiller, Robert J. & Huston McCulloch, J., 1990. "The term structure of interest rates," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 627-722, Elsevier.
    10. Mishkin, Frederic S, 1988. "The Information in the Term Structure: Some Further Results," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 3(4), pages 307-314, October-D.
    11. Manuel H. Johnson, 1988. "Current Perspectives on Monetary Policy," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 8(2), pages 253-260, Fall.
    12. Frederic S. Mishkin, 1990. "The Information in the Longer Maturity Term Structure about Future Inflation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(3), pages 815-828.
    13. Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1988. " The Predictive Power of the Term Structure during Recent Monetary Regimes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(2), pages 339-356, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kuo, Shew-Huei, 2000. "An examination of the evolving relationship between interest rates of different maturities in Japan, and test of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure to ascertain the feasibility of using," ISU General Staff Papers 2000010108000014910, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    2. M. Isabel Martínez-Serna & Eliseo Navarro-Arribas, 2002. "El modelo de McCallum. Evidencia empírica en la estructura temporal de los tipos de interés española," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 26(2), pages 323-357, May.
    3. Jondeau, E. & Ricart, R., 1999. "The Information Content of the French and German Government Bond Tield Curves: Why Such Differences?," Working papers 61, Banque de France.
    4. Harald Grech, 2004. "What Do German Short-Term Interest Rates Tell Us About Future Inflation?," Working Papers 94, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    5. Hibiki Ichiue, 2004. "Why Can the Yield Curve Predict Output Growth, Inflation, and Interest Rates? An Analysis with an Affine Term Structure Model," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 04-E-11, Bank of Japan.
    6. Jorion, Philippe, 1996. "Does real interest parity hold at longer maturities?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-2), pages 105-126, February.
    7. Arturo Estrella & Anthony P. Rodrigues & Sebastian Schich, 2003. "How Stable is the Predictive Power of the Yield Curve? Evidence from Germany and the United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(3), pages 629-644, August.
    8. Seppala, Juha, 2004. "The term structure of real interest rates: theory and evidence from UK index-linked bonds," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(7), pages 1509-1549, October.
    9. Gerlach, Stefan, 2003. "Interpreting the term structure of interbank rates in Hong Kong," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 593-609, November.
    10. Yvon Fauvel & Alain Paquet & Christian Zimmermann, 1999. "A Survey on Interest Rate Forecasting," Cahiers de recherche CREFE / CREFE Working Papers 87, CREFE, Université du Québec à Montréal.
    11. John Y. Campbell, 1995. "Some Lessons from the Yield Curve," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 129-152, Summer.
    12. Barros Luís, Jorge & Cassola, Nuno, 2001. "A two-factor model of the German term structure of interest rates," Working Paper Series 46, European Central Bank.
    13. Tzavalis, Elias & Wickens, M. R., 1996. "Forecasting inflation from the term structure," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 103-122, May.
    14. Seppälä, Juha, 2000. "The term structure of real interest rates: Theory and evidence form UK index-linked bonds," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 22/2000, Bank of Finland.
    15. Jorion, Philippe & Mishkin, Frederic, 1991. "A multicountry comparison of term-structure forecasts at long horizons," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 59-80, March.
    16. John Y. Campbell & Robert J. Shiller, 1991. "Yield Spreads and Interest Rate Movements: A Bird's Eye View," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(3), pages 495-514.
    17. Petra Gerlach-Kristen, 2007. "Three aspects of the Swiss term structure: an empirical survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 21(2), pages 221-240, June.
    18. Iichiro Uesugi & Guy M. Yamashiro, 2003. "On the Relationship Between the Very Short Forward and the Spot Interest Rate," Discussion papers 03013, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    19. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2000_022 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Ivanova, Detelina & Lahiri, Kajal & Seitz, Franz, 2000. "Interest rate spreads as predictors of German inflation and business cycles," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 39-58.
    21. van Bergeijk, Peter A. G. & Berk, Jan Marc, 2000. "Is the yield curve a useful Information variable for the Eurosystem?," Working Paper Series 0011, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3751. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.