IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mnb/bullet/v1y2006i2p6-13.html

Whom should we believe? Information content of the yield curve and analysts’ expectations

Author

Listed:
  • Péter Gábriel

    (Magyar Nemzeti Bank (central bank of Hungary))

  • Klára Pintér

    (Magyar Nemzeti Bank (central bank of Hungary))

Abstract

Expectations of market participants play an important role in monetary policy making. The main reason for this is that expectations influence the behaviour of investors and prices in financial markets. In this article, we present two sources of information on the expectations of financial market participants regarding the central bank’s policy rate. Both the yields of government securities and the survey of interest rate expectations conducted by Reuters contain information on what the market expects the future path of the policy rate to be, but sometimes these two sources of information convey substantially different messages. Our analysis helps to understand this phenomenon by shedding light on two key factors behind it. On the one hand, forward rates calculated from the yield curve contain a risk premium and exceed the expected value of the future central bank policy rate. On the other hand, analysts in the Reuters’ survey report the most likely value of the future central bank policy rate as their forecasts, instead of the average value of all possible scenarios. Finally, we claim that if the information from the two sources is interpreted properly – taking into account the previous factors – both sources contain valuable information for monetary policy making.

Suggested Citation

  • Péter Gábriel & Klára Pintér, 2006. "Whom should we believe? Information content of the yield curve and analysts’ expectations," MNB Bulletin (discontinued), Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary), vol. 1(2), pages 6-13, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:mnb:bullet:v:1:y:2006:i:2:p:6-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mnb.hu/letoltes/mnbsz-200612-gabriel-pinter-en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. H. Bakhshi & G. Kapetanios & T. Yates, 2005. "Rational expectations and fixed-event forecasts: An application to UK inflation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 539-553, October.
    2. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Kenneth A. Froot, 1985. "Using Survey Data to Test Some Standard Propositions Regarding Exchange Rate Expectations," NBER Working Papers 1672, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dániel Horváth & Péter Kálmán & Zalán Kocsis & Imre Ligeti, 2014. "What factors influence the yield curve?," MNB Bulletin (discontinued), Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary), vol. 9(1), pages 28-39, March.

    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. Ken Miyajima, 2013. "Foreign exchange intervention and expectation in emerging economies," BIS Working Papers 414, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Juann H. Hung, 1995. "Intervention strategies and exchange rate volatility: a noise trading perspective," Research Paper 9515, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    3. Burton, Diana M. & Love, H. Alan, 1996. "A Review of Alternative Expectations Regimes in Commodity Markets: Specification, Estimation, and Hypothesis Testing Using Structural Models," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 213-231, October.
    4. Rajesh Chakrabarti & Barry Scholnick, 2002. "Exchange rate expectations and foreign direct investment flows," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 138(1), pages 1-21, March.
    5. Youwei Li & Xue-Zhong He, 2005. "Long Memory, Heterogeneity, and Trend Chasing," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 113, Society for Computational Economics.
    6. Yin-Wong Cheung & Menzie D. Chinn & Ian W. Marsh, 2004. "How do UK-based foreign exchange dealers think their market operates?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(4), pages 289-306.
    7. Wihlborg, Clas, 1987. "Speculation, Bubbles, and Sunspots under Structural Uncertainty," Working Paper Series 180, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    8. Goldberg, Michael D., 2000. "On empirical exchange rate models: what does a rejection of the symmetry restriction on short-run interest rates mean?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 673-688, October.
    9. Winkelried, Diego, 2023. "Simple interpolations of inflation expectations," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    10. Pierdzioch, Christian, 2005. "Noise trading and delayed exchange rate overshooting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 133-156, September.
    11. Sonnemans, Joep & Hommes, Cars & Tuinstra, Jan & van de Velden, Henk, 2004. "The instability of a heterogeneous cobweb economy: a strategy experiment on expectation formation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 453-481, August.
    12. Bacchetta, Philippe & Mertens, Elmar & van Wincoop, Eric, 2009. "Predictability in financial markets: What do survey expectations tell us?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 406-426, April.
    13. Jongen, R. & Muller, A. & Verschoor, W.F.C., 2012. "Using survey data to resolve the exchange risk exposure puzzle: Evidence from U.S. multinational firms," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 148-169.
    14. Pfajfar, Damjan & Santoro, Emiliano, 2010. "Heterogeneity, learning and information stickiness in inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 426-444, September.
    15. Iregui, Ana María & Núñez, Héctor M. & Otero, Jesús, 2021. "Testing the efficiency of inflation and exchange rate forecast revisions in a changing economic environment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 290-314.
    16. Han, Bing & Hirshleifer, David & Wang, Tracy Yue, 2005. "Investor Overconfidence and the Forward Discount Puzzle," Working Paper Series 2005-21, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    17. Alexakis, Panayotis & Apergis, Nicholas & Xanthakis, Emmanuel, 1997. "Integration of international capital markets: further evidence from EMS and non-EMS membership," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 277-287, October.
    18. Adrian Blundell-Wignall & Frank Browne, 1992. "Real Exchange Rates and the Globalisation of Financial Markets," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9203, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    19. Della Corte, Pasquale & Sarno, Lucio & Thornton, Daniel L., 2008. "The expectation hypothesis of the term structure of very short-term rates: Statistical tests and economic value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 158-174, July.
    20. Baillie, Richard T. & Kilic, Rehim, 2006. "Do asymmetric and nonlinear adjustments explain the forward premium anomaly?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 22-47, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:mnb:bullet:v:1:y:2006:i:2:p:6-13. 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: Maja Bajcsy The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Maja Bajcsy to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mnbgvhu.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.