IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/quaeco/v52y2012i1p93-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The causal structure of bond yields

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Zijun

Abstract

This paper implements an emerging data-driven method of directed acyclic graphs to study the contemporaneous causal structure among the federal funds rate and U.S. Treasury bond yields of various maturities. Using high frequency daily data from 1994 to 2009, we find that innovations in the two-year Treasury bond yield play a central role. They contemporaneously cause most other bond yields. Therefore, monetary policy makers would benefit from closely monitoring the two-year yield in setting the interest rate target, a result echoing the policy rule suggested by Piazzesi (Journal of Political Economy, 2005). Both Fed and investors should also watch the seven-year bond yield because it explains significant portions of variability in many other yields.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Zijun, 2012. "The causal structure of bond yields," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 93-102.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:quaeco:v:52:y:2012:i:1:p:93-102
    DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2012.01.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062976912000099
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.qref.2012.01.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francis X. Diebold & Monika Piazzesi & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2005. "Modeling Bond Yields in Finance and Macroeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 415-420, May.
    2. Christopher A. Sims, 1986. "Are forecasting models usable for policy analysis?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 10(Win), pages 2-16.
    3. Alessio Moneta, 2008. "Graphical causal models and VARs: an empirical assessment of the real business cycles hypothesis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 275-300, September.
    4. Gallmeyer, Michael F. & Hollifield, Burton & Zin, Stanley E., 2005. "Taylor rules, McCallum rules and the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 921-950, July.
    5. Turan G. Bali & Panayiotis Theodossiou, 2008. "Risk Measurement Performance of Alternative Distribution Functions," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 75(2), pages 411-437, June.
    6. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    7. Bali, Turan G. & Mo, Hengyong & Tang, Yi, 2008. "The role of autoregressive conditional skewness and kurtosis in the estimation of conditional VaR," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 269-282, February.
    8. Selva Demiralp & Kevin D. Hoover & Stephen J. Perez, 2008. "A Bootstrap Method for Identifying and Evaluating a Structural Vector Autoregression," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(4), pages 509-533, August.
    9. Glenn D. Rudebusch & Tao Wu, 2008. "A Macro‐Finance Model of the Term Structure, Monetary Policy and the Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 906-926, July.
    10. Sims, Christopher A, 1980. "Macroeconomics and Reality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(1), pages 1-48, January.
    11. Osterwald-Lenum, Michael, 1992. "A Note with Quantiles of the Asymptotic Distribution of the Maximum Likelihood Cointegration Rank Test Statistics," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 54(3), pages 461-472, August.
    12. John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "Bond Risk Premia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 138-160, March.
    13. Jörg Breitung & Norman R. Swanson, 2002. "Temporal aggregation and spurious instantaneous causality in multiple time series models," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(6), pages 651-665, November.
    14. Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "Bond Yields and the Federal Reserve," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 311-344, April.
    15. Turan Bali, 2007. "Modeling the dynamics of interest rate volatility with skewed fat-tailed distributions," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 151-178, April.
    16. Bernanke, Ben S., 1986. "Alternative explanations of the money-income correlation," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 49-99, January.
    17. Michael S. Haigh & David A. Bessler, 2004. "Causality and Price Discovery: An Application of Directed Acyclic Graphs," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(4), pages 1099-1121, October.
    18. Selva Demiralp & Kevin D. Hoover, 2003. "Searching for the Causal Structure of a Vector Autoregression," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(s1), pages 745-767, December.
    19. Bali, Turan & Heidari, Massoud & Wu, Liuren, 2009. "Predictability of Interest Rates and Interest-Rate Portfolios," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 517-527.
    20. Selva Demiralp & Kevin D. Hoover, 2003. "Searching for the Causal Structure of a Vector Autoregression," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(s1), pages 745-767, December.
    21. Bennett T. McCallum, 2005. "Monetary policy and the term structure of interest rates," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 91(Fall), pages 1-21.
    22. Monika Piazzesi, 2002. "The Fed and Interest Rates - A High-Frequency Identification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 90-95, May.
    23. Titus Awokuse, 2006. "Export-led growth and the Japanese economy: evidence from VAR and directed acyclic graphs," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(5), pages 593-602.
    24. Wang, Zijun & Yang, Jian & Li, Qi, 2007. "Interest rate linkages in the Eurocurrency market: Contemporaneous and out-of-sample Granger causality tests," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 86-103, February.
    25. Johansen, Soren, 1991. "Estimation and Hypothesis Testing of Cointegration Vectors in Gaussian Vector Autoregressive Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1551-1580, November.
    26. Turan Bali & Panayiotis Theodossiou, 2007. "A conditional-SGT-VaR approach with alternative GARCH models," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 241-267, April.
    27. Johansen, Soren, 1988. "Statistical analysis of cointegration vectors," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 231-254.
    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. Xu, Xiaojie, 2014. "Causality and Price Discovery in U.S. Corn Markets: An Application of Error Correction Modeling and Directed Acyclic Graphs," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 169806, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Xiaojie Xu, 2017. "Contemporaneous causal orderings of US corn cash prices through directed acyclic graphs," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 731-758, March.
    3. Piyachart Phiromswad, 2014. "Measuring monetary policy with empirically grounded identifying restrictions," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 681-699, March.
    4. Olagunju, Kehinde Oluseyi & Feng, Siyi & Patton, Myles, 2021. "Dynamic relationships among phosphate rock, fertilisers and agricultural commodity markets: Evidence from a vector error correction model and Directed Acyclic Graphs," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Yang, Jian & Bessler, David A., 2008. "Contagion around the October 1987 stock market crash," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 184(1), pages 291-310, January.
    6. Andrew Rettenmaier & Zijun Wang, 2013. "What determines health: a causal analysis using county level data," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(5), pages 821-834, October.
    7. Alessio Moneta, 2003. "Graphical Models for Structural Vector Autoregressions," LEM Papers Series 2003/07, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    8. Alessio Moneta & Doris Entner & Patrik O. Hoyer & Alex Coad, 2013. "Causal Inference by Independent Component Analysis: Theory and Applications," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(5), pages 705-730, October.
    9. Xiaojie Xu, 2019. "Contemporaneous Causal Orderings of CSI300 and Futures Prices through Directed Acyclic Graphs," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(3), pages 2052-2077.
    10. Yu, Tun-Hsiang (Edward) & Bessler, David A. & Fuller, Stephen W., 2006. "Cointegration and Causality Analysis of World Vegetable Oil and Crude Oil Prices," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21439, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    11. Phiromswad, Piyachart, 2015. "Measuring monetary policy with empirically grounded restrictions: An application to Thailand," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 104-113.
    12. Selva Demiralp & Kevin Hoover & Stephen Perez, 2014. "Still puzzling: evaluating the price puzzle in an empirically identified structural vector autoregression," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 701-731, March.
    13. Yang, Jian & Guo, Hui & Wang, Zijun, 2006. "International transmission of inflation among G-7 countries: A data-determined VAR analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(10), pages 2681-2700, October.
    14. Pericoli, Marcello & Taboga, Marco, 2012. "Bond risk premia, macroeconomic fundamentals and the exchange rate," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 42-65.
    15. Huse, Cristian, 2011. "Term structure modelling with observable state variables," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3240-3252.
    16. Ericsson, Neil R & Hendry, David F & Mizon, Grayham E, 1998. "Exogeneity, Cointegration, and Economic Policy Analysis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(4), pages 370-387, October.
    17. Alessio Moneta & Peter Spirtes, 2005. "Graph-Based Search Procedure for Vector Autoregressive Models," LEM Papers Series 2005/14, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    18. Jean Louis EKOMANE, 2017. "Monetary policy transmission: Does the credit channel perform in Cameroon?," Turkish Economic Review, KSP Journals, vol. 4(4), pages 369-377, December.
    19. Alessio Moneta, 2005. "Causality in macroeconometrics: some considerations about reductionism and realism," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 433-453.
    20. Evans, Charles L. & Marshall, David A., 1998. "Monetary policy and the term structure of nominal interest rates: Evidence and theory," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 53-111, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Term structure; Monetary policy; Directed graphs; Error variance decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • C49 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Other

    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:eee:quaeco:v:52:y:2012:i:1:p:93-102. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620167 .

    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.