Search Results
Working Paper
Do macro variables, asset markets, or surveys forecast inflation better?
Surveys do! We examine the forecasting power of four alternative methods of forecasting U.S. inflation out-of-sample: time series ARIMA models; regressions using real activity measures motivated from the Phillips curve; term structure models that include linear, non-linear, and arbitrage-free specifications; and survey-based measures. We also investigate several methods of combining forecasts. Our results show that surveys outperform the other forecasting methods and that the term structure specifications perform relatively poorly. We find little evidence that combining forecasts produces ...
Working Paper
Confidence intervals for long-horizon predictive regressions via reverse regressions
Long-horizon predictive regressions in finance pose formidable econometric problems when estimated using the sample sizes that are typically available. A remedy that has been proposed by Hodrick (1992) is to run a reverse regression in which short-horizon returns are projected onto a long-run mean of some predictor. By covariance stationarity, the slope coefficient is zero in the reverse regression if and only if it is zero in the original regression, but testing the hypothesis in the reverse regression avoids small sample problems. Unfortunately this only allows us to test the null of no ...
Working Paper
Tips from TIPS: the informational content of Treasury Inflation-Protected Security prices
We examine the informational content of TIPS yields from the viewpoint of a general 3-factor no-arbitrage term structure model of inflation and interest rates. Our empirical results indicate that TIPS yields contained a "liquidity premium" that was until recently quite large (~ 1%). Key features of this premium are difficult to account for in a rational pricing framework, suggesting that TIPS may not have been priced efficiently in its early years. Besides the liquidity premium, a time-varying inflation risk premium complicates the interpretation of the TIPS breakeven inflation rate (the ...
Discussion Paper
Projected Evolution of the SOMA Portfolio and the 10-Year Treasury Term Premium Effect
An earlier Feds note used staff models to provide a projection for the evolution of the SOMA portfolio and an estimate of the associated term premium effect (TPE) on the 10-year Treasury yield. That analysis relied on economic, financial, and monetary policy assumptions as of April 2017. With the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcing a change in its reinvestment policy in its September 2017 post-meeting statement, this note provides updated projections.
Working Paper
Term Structure Modeling with Supply Factors and the Federal Reserve's Large Scale Asset Purchase Programs
This paper estimates an arbitrage-free term structure model with both observable yield factors and Treasury and Agency MBS supply factors, and uses it to evaluate the term premium effects of the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase programs. Our estimates show that the first and the second large-scale asset purchase programs and the maturity extension program jointly reduced the 10-year Treasury yield by about 100 basis points.
Newsletter
Macroeconomic Sources of Recent Interest Rate Fluctuations
The authors use a new statistical method to attribute daily changes in U.S. Treasury yields and inflation compensation to changes in investor beliefs about domestic and foreign growth, inflation, and monetary policy. They find that while foreign developments have been important drivers of U.S. yields and expected inflation over the last decade, the recent divergence between U.S. and European monetary policy has had little effect. Instead, the behavior of asset prices seems consistent with positive ?aggregate supply shocks.? One candidate for such shocks is the large decline in energy prices ...
Working Paper
Expectations about the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and the term structure of interest rates
This paper provides a systematic assessment of the effect of the Federal Reserve's asset purchase programs on Treasury yields, with particular emphasis on the role of market expectations about the evolution of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and of interest rates on the impact of the programs. We construct measures of such market expectations based on Blue Chip survey forecasts, Congressional Budget Office projections, and information from formal FOMC communications. Those measures are combined with a no-arbitrage term structure model, in which yields are driven by current and expected ...
Working Paper
Inflation Disagreement Weakens the Power of Monetary Policy
Households often disagree in their inflation outlooks. We present novel empirical evidence that inflation disagreement weakens the power of forward guidance and conventional monetary policy. These empirical observations can be rationalized by a model featuring heterogeneous beliefs about the central banks’ inflation target. An agent who perceives higher future inflation also perceives a lower real interest rate and thus would like to borrow more to finance consumption, subject to borrowing constraints. Higher inflation disagreement would lead to a larger share of borrowing-constrained ...
Working Paper
Flights to Safety
Using only daily data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety (FTS) episodes for 23 countries. On average, FTS days comprise less than 3% of the sample, and bond returns exceed equity returns by 2.5 to 4%. The majority of FTS events are country-specific not global. FTS episodes coincide with increases in the VIX and the Ted spread, decreases in consumer sentiment indicators and appreciations of the Yen, Swiss franc, and US dollar. The financial, basic materials and industrial industries under-perform in FTS episodes, but the telecom industry outperforms. Money ...
Discussion Paper
What Drove Recent Trends in Corporate Bonds and Loans Usage?
U.S. nonfinancial business debt increased substantially in recent years in both absolute and relative terms and is now near its record high. Figure 1 shows that most of this increase was due to significant growth in investment-grade (IG) corporate bonds and institutional leveraged loans, while high-yield (HY) corporate bonds and C&I loans largely remained steady.