IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2018-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Near-Term Forward Yield Spread as a Leading Indicator : A Less Distorted Mirror

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Engstrom
  • Steven A. Sharpe

Abstract

The spread between the yield on a 10-year Treasury bond and the yield on a shorter maturity bond, such as a 2-year Treasury, is commonly used as an indicator for predicting U.S. recessions. We show that such ?long-term spreads? are statistically dominated in recession prediction models by an economically more intuitive alternative, a \"\"near-term forward spread.\"\" This latter spread can be interpreted as a measure of the market's expectations for the near-term trajectory of conventional monetary policy rates. The predictive power of our near-term forward spread indicates that, when market participants expected?and priced in?a monetary policy easing over the next 12-18 months, this indicated that a recession was quite likely in the offing. Yields on bonds beyond 18 months in maturity are shown to have no added value for forecasting either recessions or the growth rate of GDP.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Engstrom & Steven A. Sharpe, 2018. "The Near-Term Forward Yield Spread as a Leading Indicator : A Less Distorted Mirror," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-055, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2018-55
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2018.055
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2018055pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael D. Bauer & Thomas M. Mertens, 2018. "Economic Forecasts with the Yield Curve," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    2. Peter Johansson & Andrew C. Meldrum, 2018. "Predicting Recession Probabilities Using the Slope of the Yield Curve," FEDS Notes 2018-03-01-3, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Policy path; Recession forecast; Yield spread; Monetary policy;

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    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:fip:fedgfe:2018-55. 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: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.