IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecj/ac2003/183.html

Federal Funds Rate Prediction

Author

Listed:
  • Sarno, Lucio

    (University of Warwick)

  • Daniel l Thornton
  • Giorgio Valente

Abstract

Recent research has reported that both the federal funds rate futures market and the federal funds target contain valuable information for explaining the behavior of the US effective federal funds rate. A parallel literature on interest rate modelling has recorded evidence that the dynamics of interest rates displays significant regime-switching behavior. In this paper we produce out of sample forecasts of the federal funds rate at horizons up to 8 weeks ahead using linear and nonlinear, regime-switching equilibrium correction models of the funds rate and employing both point and density measures of forecast accuracy. We cannot discriminate among the models considered in terms of point forecast accuracy. However, in terms of density forecast accuracy, we find that the term structure model of the federal funds futures rate is significantly better than the other models considered, and that regime-switching models provide a substantial forecasting improvement relative to their linear counterparts and relative to individual series of the futures rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarno, Lucio & Daniel l Thornton & Giorgio Valente, 2003. "Federal Funds Rate Prediction," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 183, Royal Economic Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecj:ac2003:183
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.org/res2003/Sarno.pdf
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Artem Meshcheryakov & Stoyu I Ivanov, 2017. "Investor's sentiment in predicting the Effective Federal Funds Rate," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(4), pages 2767-2796.
    3. Ramos-Tallada, Julio, 2015. "Bank risks, monetary shocks and the credit channel in Brazil: Identification and evidence from panel data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 135-161.
    4. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Luis Alberiko Gil-Alana, 2025. "Persistence and Nonlinearities in the US Federal Funds Rate," CESifo Working Paper Series 11913, CESifo.
    5. Katsuhiro Sugita, 2017. "Time Series Analysis of the US Term Structure of Interest Rates Using a Bayesian Markov Switching Cointegration Model," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(3), pages 49-56, March.
    6. Kirstin Hubrich & Kenneth D. West, 2010. "Forecast evaluation of small nested model sets," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 574-594.
    7. Tillmann, Peter, 2007. "Inflation regimes in the US term structure of interest rates," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 203-223, March.
    8. West, Kenneth D., 2006. "Forecast Evaluation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 99-134, Elsevier.
    9. Thomadakis, Apostolos, 2016. "Do Combination Forecasts Outperform the Historical Average? Economic and Statistical Evidence," MPRA Paper 71589, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. William R. Emmons & Aeimit K. Lakdawala & Christopher J. Neely, 2006. "What are the odds? option-based forecasts of FOMC target changes," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(Nov), pages 543-562.
    11. Todd E. Clark & Michael W. McCracken, 2010. "Reality checks and nested forecast model comparisons," Working Papers 2010-032, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    12. Feunou Bruno & Fontaine Jean-Sébastien & Jin Jianjian, 2021. "What model for the target rate," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 25(1), pages 1-23, February.
    13. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Gil-Alana, Luis A., 2017. "Persistence and cycles in the us federal funds rate," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 1-8.
    14. Tillmann, Peter, 2003. "Cointegration and Regime-Switching Risk Premia in the U.S. Term Structure of Interest Rates," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 27/2003, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    15. Sarno, Lucio & Thornton, Daniel L., 2003. "The dynamic relationship between the federal funds rate and the Treasury bill rate: An empirical investigation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1079-1110, June.
    16. Jordan, Steven J. & Vivian, Andrew & Wohar, Mark E., 2016. "Can commodity returns forecast Canadian sector stock returns?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 172-188.
    17. PeterTillmann, 2004. "Cointegration and Regime-Switching Risk Premia in the U.S. Term Structure of Interest Rates," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 53, Society for Computational Economics.
    18. Marco Lippi & Daniel L. Thornton, 2004. "A Dynamic Factor Analysis of the Response of U.S. Interest Rates to News," LEM Papers Series 2004/05, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    19. Bjørn-Roger Wilhelmsen & Andrea Zaghini, 2011. "Monetary policy predictability in the euro area: an international comparison," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(20), pages 2533-2544.
    20. Friedrich Heinemann & Katrin Ullrich, 2007. "Does it Pay to Watch Central Bankers’ Lips? The Information Content of ECB Wording," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 143(II), pages 155-185, June.
    21. James D. Hamilton, 2007. "Assessing Monetary Policy Effects Using Daily Fed Funds Futures Contracts," NBER Working Papers 13569, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Kim, Hyerim & Kang, Kyu Ho, 2022. "The Bank of Korea watch," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    23. Guidolin, Massimo & Timmermann, Allan, 2009. "Forecasts of US short-term interest rates: A flexible forecast combination approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 150(2), pages 297-311, June.
    24. James D. Hamilton, 2008. "Assessing monetary policy effects using daily federal funds futures contracts," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 90(Jul), pages 377-394.
    25. Kosei Fukuda, 2011. "Cointegration rank switching model: an application to forecasting interest rates," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(5), pages 509-522, August.

    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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ecj:ac2003:183. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.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.