IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/08031.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary Policy Surprises and Interest Rates: Choosing between the Inflation-Revelation and Excess Sensitivity Hypotheses

Author

Listed:
  • THORBECKE, Willem
  • Hanjiang ZHANG

Abstract

Romer and Romer (R&R) reported that federal funds rate increases may raise expected inflation by revealing the Fed's private information about inflation. Gurkaynak, Sack, and Swanson (GSS) presented evidence that funds rate increases lowered long-term expected inflation. To choose between these hypotheses we examine how monetary policy surprises affect daily traded commodity prices, term interest rates, and forward interest rates. We find that funds rate increases in the 1970s raised gold and silver prices and that increases after 1989 lowered gold and silver prices. We also find that funds rate hikes over both sample periods primarily affected short-term interest rates and near-term forward rates. For the 1970s, these results suggest that R&R's explanation is correct. For recent years, they indicate that funds rate increases affect real rates and may also be consistent with GSS's findings.

Suggested Citation

  • THORBECKE, Willem & Hanjiang ZHANG, 2008. "Monetary Policy Surprises and Interest Rates: Choosing between the Inflation-Revelation and Excess Sensitivity Hypotheses," Discussion papers 08031, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:08031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/08e031.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Y. Campbell, 1995. "Some Lessons from the Yield Curve," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 129-152, Summer.
    2. Kuttner, Kenneth N., 2001. "Monetary policy surprises and interest rates: Evidence from the Fed funds futures market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 523-544, June.
    3. Hardouvelis, Gikas A & Barnhart, Scott W, 1989. "The Evolution of Federal Reserve Credibility: 1978-1984," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(3), pages 385-393, August.
    4. Refet S Gürkaynak & Brian Sack & Eric Swanson, 2005. "Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? The Response of Asset Prices to Monetary Policy Actions and Statements," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May.
    5. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 2008. "The Effect of Monetary Policy on Real Commodity Prices," NBER Chapters,in: Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, pages 291-333 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. David H. Romer & Christina D. Romer, 2000. "Federal Reserve Information and the Behavior of Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 429-457, June.
    7. Ben S. Bernanke & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1997. "Inflation Targeting: A New Framework for Monetary Policy?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 97-116, Spring.
    8. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Brian P. Sack & Eric T. Swanson, 2003. "The excess sensitivity of long-term interest rates: evidence and implications for macroeconomic models," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Mar.
    9. Frankel, Jeffrey A & Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1985. "Commodity Prices, Money Surprises and Fed Credibility," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 17(4), pages 425-438, November.
    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. Willem THORBECKE, 2017. "The Effect of the Fed's Large-scale Asset Purchases on Inflation Expectations," Discussion papers 17097, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    2. David Beckworth & Kenneth P. Moon & J. Holland Toles, 2012. "Can Monetary Policy Influence Long-Term Interest Rates? It Depends," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(4), pages 1080-1096, October.
    3. repec:eee:finana:v:52:y:2017:i:c:p:292-308 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    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

    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:eti:dpaper:08031. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (KUMAGAI, Akiko). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.