IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/115398.html

South Africa’s yield curve conundrum

Author

Listed:
  • Erasmus, Ruan
  • Steenkamp, Daan

Abstract

South Africa’s sovereign yield curve is one of the steepest in the world. We show that South Africa’s curve has steepened over recent years and that this can be explained by an increase in the term premium embedded in long rates. We also show that marketimplied long term neutral interest rates for South Africa are high compared to both advanced economies and some emerging markets. Simple reduced form models of the term premium however struggle to explain its dynamics. We argue that the answer to resolving South Africa’s yield curve conundrum lies in improving our understanding of inflation and sovereign credit premia, as well as foreign exchange depreciation risk. Since a higher term premium tends to weigh on economic growth, we also argue that it is important for policymakers to use the policy levers that would help to reduce long term interest rates. These include strengthening the fiscal position, issuing government securities at a greater variety of maturities and lowering macroeconomic volatility - particularly related to high and variable inflation.

Suggested Citation

  • Erasmus, Ruan & Steenkamp, Daan, 2022. "South Africa’s yield curve conundrum," MPRA Paper 115398, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:115398
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/115398/1/MPRA_paper_115398.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Havemann, Roy & Hollander, Hylton, 2024. "Fiscal policy in times of fiscal stress (or what to do when r > g)," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 46(5), pages 1020-1054.
    2. Lars E.O. Svensson, 1994. "Estimating and Interpreting Forward Interest Rates: Sweden 1992 - 1994," NBER Working Papers 4871, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Halil Ibrahim Aydin & Ozgur Ozel, 2019. "Term Premium in Turkish Lira Interest Rates," Working Papers 1933, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    4. Bojosi Morule & Daan Steenkamp, 2018. "Occasional Bulletin of Economic Notes 2018/02- The structure of South Africa’s external position," Working Papers 8878, South African Reserve Bank.
    5. Allan M. Malz, 1997. "Option-implied probability distributions and currency excess returns," Staff Reports 32, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    6. Luchelle Soobyah & Daan Steenkamp, 2021. "Has publication of a repo path provided guidance," Occasional Bulletin of Economic Notes 11008, South African Reserve Bank.
    7. Ana Aguilar & María Diego-Fernández & Rocio Elizondo & Jessica Roldán-Peña, 2022. "Term premium dynamics and its determinants: the Mexican case," BIS Working Papers 993, Bank for International Settlements.
    8. Michael Callaghan, 2019. "Expectations and the term premium in New Zealand long-term interest rates," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Analytical Notes series AN2019/02, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    9. Matthew Greenwood-Nimmo & Daan Steenkamp & Rossouw van Jaarsveld, 2021. "Risk and Return Spillovers in a Global Model of the Foreign Exchange Network," ERSA Working Paper Series, Economic Research Southern Africa, vol. 0.
    10. Tim Olds & Daan Steenkamp, 2021. "Estimates of bank-level funding costs in South Africa," ERSA Working Paper Series, Economic Research Southern Africa, vol. 0.
    11. Nelson, Charles R & Siegel, Andrew F, 1987. "Parsimonious Modeling of Yield Curves," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(4), pages 473-489, October.
    12. repec:rbz:oboens:11019 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Hylton Hollander, 2024. "Debt-financed fiscal stimulus in South Africa," Studies in Economics and Econometrics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(1), pages 87-112, January.

    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. Esteban Méndez-Chacón & Diana Van Patten, 2022. "Voting on a Trade Agreement: Firm Networks and Attitudes Toward Openness," Documentos de Trabajo 2204, Banco Central de Costa Rica.
    2. Gary S. Anderson & Alena Audzeyeva, 2019. "A Coherent Framework for Predicting Emerging Market Credit Spreads with Support Vector Regression," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-074, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Nguyen, Minh, 2020. "Collateral haircuts and bond yields in the European government bond markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    4. Schich, Sebastian T., 1996. "Alternative specifications of the German term structure and its information content regarding inflation," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1996,08e, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    5. Ioannis A. Venetis & Avgoustinos Ladas, 2023. "Co-movement and global factors in sovereign bond yields," Bulletin of Applied Economics, Risk Market Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 17-45.
    6. Eric Jondeau & Frédéric Sedillot, 1998. "La pr vision des taux longs fran ais et allemands partir d'un modele anticipations rationnelles," Working papers 55, Banque de France.
    7. Entrop, Oliver & Fischer, Georg & McKenzie, Michael & Wilkens, Marco & Winkler, Christoph, 2016. "How does pricing affect investors’ product choice? Evidence from the market for discount certificates," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 195-215.
    8. Patrick Büchel & Michael Kratochwil & Maximilian Nagl & Daniel Rösch, 2022. "Deep calibration of financial models: turning theory into practice," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 109-136, July.
    9. Christophe Chorro & Dominique Guegan & Florian Ielpo, 2010. "Option pricing for GARCH-type models with generalized hyperbolic innovations," Post-Print halshs-00469529, HAL.
    10. repec:tsa:wpaper:0030fin is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Mohamed Amine Boutabba & Yves Rannou, 2020. "Investor strategies and Liquidity Premia in the European Green Bond market," Post-Print hal-02544451, HAL.
    12. Lauren Stagnol, 2017. "Introducing global term structure in a risk parity framework," Working Papers hal-04141648, HAL.
    13. Virmani, Vineet, 2014. "Model Risk in Pricing Path-dependent Derivatives: An Illustration," IIMA Working Papers WP2014-03-22, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    14. Brian Barnard, 2019. "Interest Rate Term Structure Decomposition: An Axiomatic," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 6(1), pages 84-96, January.
    15. Gauthier, Geneviève & Simonato, Jean-Guy, 2012. "Linearized Nelson–Siegel and Svensson models for the estimation of spot interest rates," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 219(2), pages 442-451.
    16. repec:adr:anecst:y:1998:i:52:p:01 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Schertler, Andrea, 2016. "Pricing effects when competitors arrive: The case of discount certificates in Germany," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 84-99.
    18. Eder, Armin & Keiler, Sebastian & Pichl, Hannes, 2013. "Interest rate risk and the Swiss solvency test," Discussion Papers 41/2013, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    19. Guo, Feng & McCulloch, J.H., 2017. "Heterogeneous capital and misintermediation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 16-41.
    20. Alfaro, Rodrigo & Piña, Marco, 2023. "Estimates of the US Shadow-Rate," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 4(1).
    21. Uri Ron, 2000. "A Practical Guide to Swap Curve Construction," Staff Working Papers 00-17, Bank of Canada.
    22. Marcin Dec, 2021. "Parsimonious yield curve modeling in less liquid markets," GRAPE Working Papers 52, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    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:pra:mprapa:115398. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.