IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v24y2011i9p2895-2934.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Information in (and not in) the Term Structure

Author

Listed:
  • Gregory R. Duffee

Abstract

Standard approaches to building and estimating dynamic term structure models rely on the assumption that yields can serve as the factors. However, the assumption is neither theoretically necessary nor empirically supported. This article documents that almost half of the variation in bond risk premia cannot be detected using the cross-section of yields. Fluctuations in this hidden component have strong forecast power for both future short-term interest rates and excess bond returns. They are also negatively correlated with aggregate economic activity, but macroeconomic variables explain only a small fraction of variation in the hidden factor. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory R. Duffee, 2011. "Information in (and not in) the Term Structure," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 2895-2934.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:24:y:2011:i:9:p:2895-2934
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhr033
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott Joslin & Kenneth J. Singleton & Haoxiang Zhu, 2011. "A New Perspective on Gaussian Dynamic Term Structure Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(3), pages 926-970.
    2. Gurkaynak, Refet S. & Sack, Brian & Wright, Jonathan H., 2007. "The U.S. Treasury yield curve: 1961 to the present," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2291-2304, November.
    3. John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "Bond Risk Premia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 138-160, March.
    4. Qiang Dai & Kenneth J. Singleton, 2000. "Specification Analysis of Affine Term Structure Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 1943-1978, October.
    5. Ang, Andrew & Piazzesi, Monika, 2003. "A no-arbitrage vector autoregression of term structure dynamics with macroeconomic and latent variables," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 745-787, May.
    6. Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2009. "Macro Factors in Bond Risk Premia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(12), pages 5027-5067, December.
    7. Gregory R. Duffee, 2002. "Term Premia and Interest Rate Forecasts in Affine Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 405-443, February.
    8. Greg Duffee, 2010. "Sharpe ratios in term structure models," Economics Working Paper Archive 575, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    9. Greg Duffee, 2011. "Forecasting with the term structure: The role of no-arbitrage restrictions," Economics Working Paper Archive 576, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    10. Ilan Cooper, 2009. "Time-Varying Risk Premiums and the Output Gap," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(7), pages 2601-2633, July.
    11. Ang, Andrew & Piazzesi, Monika & Wei, Min, 2006. "What does the yield curve tell us about GDP growth?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 359-403.
    12. Pierre Collin‐Dufresne & Robert S. Goldstein, 2002. "Do Bonds Span the Fixed Income Markets? Theory and Evidence for Unspanned Stochastic Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1685-1730, August.
    13. Pennacchi, George G, 1991. "Identifying the Dynamics of Real Interest Rates and Inflation: Evidence Using Survey Data," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(1), pages 53-86.
    14. Pearson, Neil D & Sun, Tong-Sheng, 1994. "Exploiting the Conditional Density in Estimating the Term Structure: An Application to the Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross Model," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1279-1304, September.
    15. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1989. "Business conditions and expected returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 23-49, November.
    16. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Duffee, Gregory, 2013. "Forecasting Interest Rates," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 385-426, Elsevier.
    2. Doshi, Hitesh & Jacobs, Kris & Liu, Rui, 2018. "Macroeconomic determinants of the term structure: Long-run and short-run dynamics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 99-122.
    3. Dahlquist, Magnus & Hasseltoft, Henrik, 2013. "International Bond Risk Premia," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 17-32.
    4. Duffee, Gregory R., 2013. "Bond Pricing and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 907-967, Elsevier.
    5. Goliński, Adam & Spencer, Peter, 2017. "The advantages of using excess returns to model the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 163-181.
    6. Christensen, Bent Jesper & van der Wel, Michel, 2019. "An asset pricing approach to testing general term structure models," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 165-191.
    7. Hamilton, James D. & Wu, Jing Cynthia, 2014. "Testable implications of affine term structure models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 178(P2), pages 231-242.
    8. Adrian, Tobias & Crump, Richard K. & Moench, Emanuel, 2013. "Pricing the term structure with linear regressions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 110-138.
    9. Li, Junye & Sarno, Lucio & Zinna, Gabriele, 2024. "Risks and risk premia in the US Treasury market," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    10. Liu, Yan & Wu, Jing Cynthia, 2021. "Reconstructing the yield curve," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1395-1425.
    11. Joslin, Scott & Le, Anh & Singleton, Kenneth J., 2013. "Why Gaussian macro-finance term structure models are (nearly) unconstrained factor-VARs," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 604-622.
    12. Chiarella, Carl & Hsiao, Chih-Ying & Tô, Thuy-Duong, 2016. "Stochastic correlation and risk premia in term structure models," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 59-78.
    13. Chernov, Mikhail & Mueller, Philippe, 2012. "The term structure of inflation expectations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 367-394.
    14. Hitesh Doshi & Kris Jacobs & Rui Liu, 2021. "Information in the Term Structure: A Forecasting Perspective," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(8), pages 5255-5277, August.
    15. Carriero, Andrea & Kapetanios, George & Marcellino, Massimiliano, 2012. "Forecasting government bond yields with large Bayesian vector autoregressions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 2026-2047.
    16. Lioui, Abraham & Tarelli, Andrea, 2019. "Macroeconomic environment, money demand and portfolio choice," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 274(1), pages 357-374.
    17. Vasilios Plakandaras & Periklis Gogas & Theophilos Papadimitriou & Rangan Gupta, 2016. "The Term Premium as a Leading Macroeconomic Indicator," Working Papers 201613, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    18. Pericoli, Marcello & Taboga, Marco, 2012. "Bond risk premia, macroeconomic fundamentals and the exchange rate," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 42-65.
    19. Glenn D. Rudebusch & Eric T. Swanson & Tao Wu, 2006. "The Bond Yield "Conundrum" from a Macro-Finance Perspective," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 24(S1), pages 83-109, December.
    20. Zhang, Han & Guo, Bin & Liu, Lanbiao, 2022. "The time-varying bond risk premia in China," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 51-76.

    More about this item

    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:oup:rfinst:v:24:y:2011:i:9:p:2895-2934. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.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.