IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uma/periwp/wp295.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decoupling between the Federal Funds Rate and Long-term Interest Rates: Decreasing Effectiveness of Monetary Policy in the U.S

Author

Listed:
  • Hasan Cömert

Abstract

Cömert investigates the relationship between overnight interest rates and the long-term rates in the US from 1983q1 to 2007q3. He presents evidence supporting the argument that there was a gradual decoupling between the Fed interest rate and long-term interest rates even before the recent crisis. In other words, the Fed was gradually losing its control over long-term interest rates. As opposed to many economists’ claims, the period after 2001 was a continuation of a process which has surfaced since the end of the 1980s. Both descriptive statistics and different econometric techniques robustly support the argument that the decoupling began way earlier than 2001. Furthermore, the purchase of the US assets by foreigners might have played some role in this process although the findings related to this are not very robust.

Suggested Citation

  • Hasan Cömert, 2012. "Decoupling between the Federal Funds Rate and Long-term Interest Rates: Decreasing Effectiveness of Monetary Policy in the U.S," Working Papers wp295, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    • Handle: RePEc:uma:periwp:wp295
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://per.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_251-300/WP295.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    3. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2007. "Enhanced routines for instrumental variables/GMM estimation and testing," CERT Discussion Papers 0706, Centre for Economic Reform and Transformation, Heriot Watt University.
    4. Alan Greenspan, 2005. "Federal Reserve Board's semiannual monetary policy report to the Congress: testimony before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, July 21, 2005," Speech 115, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2004. "A PANIC Attack on Unit Roots and Cointegration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1127-1177, July.
    6. John Y. Campbell & Robert J. Shiller, 1991. "Yield Spreads and Interest Rate Movements: A Bird's Eye View," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(3), pages 495-514.
    7. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    8. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2000. "Decoupling at the Margin: The Threat to Monetary Policy from the Electronic Revolution in Banking," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 261-272, July.
    9. Bennett T. McCallum, 2001. "Monetary policy analysis in models without money," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 83(Jul), pages 145-164.
    10. Michael Woodford, 2002. "Financial market efficiency and the effectiveness of monetary policy," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 8(May), pages 85-94.
    11. David H. Romer, 2000. "Keynesian Macroeconomics without the LM Curve," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 149-169, Spring.
    12. 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.
    13. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2000. "Decoupling at the Margin: The Threat to Monetary Policy from the Electronic Revolution in Banking," NBER Working Papers 7955, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. De Loubens, A. & Idier, J. & Jardet, C., 2007. "Determinants of long-term interest rates in the United States and the euro area: A multivariate approach," Working papers 170, Banque de France.
    15. Arturo Estrella & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1996. "The yield curve as a predictor of U.S. recessions," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 2(Jun).
    16. Arturo Estrella, 2005. "Why Does the Yield Curve Predict Output and Inflation?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 722-744, July.
    17. repec:bla:intfin:v:3:y:2000:i:2:p:261-72 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. Holmes, Mark J. & Otero, Jesús & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2015. "The expectations hypothesis and decoupling of short- and long-term US interest rates: A pairwise approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 301-313.
    2. Levrero, Enrico Sergio & Deleidi, Matteo, 2019. "The causal relationship between short- and long-term interest rates: an empirical assessment of the United States," MPRA Paper 93608, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Luciano Vereda & Hélio Lopes & Jessica Kubrusly & Adrian Pizzinga & Taofik Mohammed Ibrahim, 2014. "Yield Curve Forecasts and the Predictive Power of Macro Variables in a VAR Framework," Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, Lifescience Global, vol. 3, pages 377-393.
    2. Eckhard Hein & Christian Schoder, 2011. "Interest rates, distribution and capital accumulation -- A post-Kaleckian perspective on the US and Germany," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 693-723, November.
    3. Philip Arestis & Malcolm Sawyer, 2003. "Does the stock of money have any causal significance?," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 56(225), pages 113-136.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5221 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Teruyoshi Kobayashi, 2004. "On the Relationship Between Short‐ and Long‐term Interest Rates," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 261-286, July.
    6. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/5221 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Thornton, Daniel L., 2014. "Monetary policy: Why money matters (and interest rates don’t)," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 202-213.
    8. Elaine Cristina de Piza & Joilson Dias, 2006. "Novo Consenso Macroeconômico E Política Monetária No Brasil: Uma Avaliação Empírica," Anais do XXXIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 34th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 164, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    9. Eckhard Hein & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2010. "Macroeconomic Policy Mix, Employment and Inflation in a Post-Keynesian Alternative to the New Consensus Model," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 317-354.
    10. Daniel Burren, 2010. "The Term Structure of Interest Rates in a New Keynesian Model with Time-Varying Macro Volatility," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 11(2), pages 277-299, November.
    11. Alessandro Piergallini, 2006. "Real Balance Effects and Monetary Policy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(3), pages 497-511, July.
    12. Piergallini, Alessandro, 2004. "Real Balance Effects, Determinacy and Optimal Monetary Policy," MPRA Paper 59832, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Francisco Rosende R., 2004. "El marco teórico de la política monetaria," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 19(2), pages 85-117, December.
    14. Mr. Helmut Wagner, 2001. "Implications of Globalization for Monetary Policy," IMF Working Papers 2001/184, International Monetary Fund.
    15. Favero, Carlo A., 2001. "Does Macroeconomics Help Us To Understand the Term Structure of Interest Rates?," CEPR Discussion Papers 2849, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Jan Korda, 2011. "Monetární nerovnováha v teorii endogenních peněz [Monetary Disequilibrium in the Theory of Endogenous Money]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2011(5), pages 680-705.
    17. Matteo Deleidi & Enrico Sergio Levrero, 2021. "Monetary policy and long‐term interest rates: Evidence from the U.S. economy," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(1), pages 121-147, February.
    18. Jean-Luc Gaffard, 2014. "Crise de la théorie et crise de la politique économique. Des modèles d'équilibre général stochastique aux modèles de dynamique hors de l'équilibre," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 65(1), pages 71-96.
    19. Geert Bekaert & Seonghoon Cho & Antonio Moreno, 2010. "New Keynesian Macroeconomics and the Term Structure," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(1), pages 33-62, February.
    20. Andr? Kurmann & Christopher Otrok, 2013. "News Shocks and the Slope of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2612-2632, October.
    21. Lindé, Jesper & Smets, Frank & Wouters, Rafael, 2016. "Challenges for Central Banks´ Macro Models," Working Paper Series 323, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    22. Meixing DAI, 2009. "On the role of money growth targeting under inflation targeting regime," Working Papers of BETA 2009-11, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Central Banking; Federal Funds Rate; US Monetary Policy; Short-Term and Long Term Interest Rates; Decoupling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    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:uma:periwp:wp295. 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: Judy Fogg The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Judy Fogg to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/permaus.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.