IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwedp/7214.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Level, Slope, Curvature: Characterising the Yield Curve in a Cointegrated VAR Model

Author

Listed:
  • Giese, Julia V.

Abstract

Empirical evidence on the expectations hypothesis of the term structure is in-conclusive and its validity widely debated. Using a cointegrated VAR model of US treasury yields, this paper extends a common approach to test the theory. If, as we find, spreads between two yields are non-stationary, the expectations hypothesis fails. However, we present evidence that differences between two spreads are stationary. This suggests that the curvature of the yield curve may be a more meaningful indicator of expected future interest rates than the slope. Furthermore, we characterise level and slope by deriving the common trends inherent in the cointegrated VAR, and establish feedback patterns between them and the macroeconomy.

Suggested Citation

  • Giese, Julia V., 2008. "Level, Slope, Curvature: Characterising the Yield Curve in a Cointegrated VAR Model," Economics Discussion Papers 2008-13, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:7214
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2008-13
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/17985/1/dp2008-13.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carstensen, Kai, 2003. "Nonstationary term premia and cointegration of the term structure," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 409-413, September.
    2. Dewachter, Hans & Lyrio, Marco, 2006. "Macro Factors and the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(1), pages 119-140, February.
    3. Wu, Tao, 2006. "Macro Factors and the Affine Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(7), pages 1847-1875, October.
    4. Engle, Robert & Granger, Clive, 2015. "Co-integration and error correction: Representation, estimation, and testing," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 39(3), pages 106-135.
    5. 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.
    6. Campbell, John Y & Shiller, Robert J, 1987. "Cointegration and Tests of Present Value Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1062-1088, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Gonzalo, Jesus, 1994. "Five alternative methods of estimating long-run equilibrium relationships," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1-2), pages 203-233.
    9. Diebold, Francis X. & Rudebusch, Glenn D. & Borag[caron]an Aruoba, S., 2006. "The macroeconomy and the yield curve: a dynamic latent factor approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 309-338.
    10. Henrik Hansen & Søren Johansen, 1999. "Some tests for parameter constancy in cointegrated VAR-models," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 2(2), pages 306-333.
    11. Shea, Gary S, 1992. "Benchmarking the Expectations Hypothesis of the Interest-Rate Term Structure: An Analysis of Cointegration Vectors," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(3), pages 347-366, July.
    12. Hall, Anthony D & Anderson, Heather M & Granger, Clive W J, 1992. "A Cointegration Analysis of Treasury Bill Yields," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(1), pages 116-126, February.
    13. Knez, Peter J & Litterman, Robert & Scheinkman, Jose Alexandre, 1994. "Explorations into Factors Explaining Money Market Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1861-1882, December.
    14. Yoshihisa Baba & David F. Hendry & Ross M. Starr, 1992. "The Demand for M1 in the U.S.A., 1960–1988," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 25-61.
    15. Bent Nielsen, 2001. "Order determination in general vector autoregressions," Economics Papers 2001-W10, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    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. Cavaliere, Giuseppe & Rahbek, Anders & Taylor, A.M. Robert, 2010. "Testing for co-integration in vector autoregressions with non-stationary volatility," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(1), pages 7-24, September.
    2. Cavaliere, Giuseppe & Rahbek, Anders & Taylor, A.M. Robert, 2010. "Cointegration Rank Testing Under Conditional Heteroskedasticity," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(6), pages 1719-1760, December.
    3. Jennifer Castle & Takamitsu Kurita, 2022. "Structural relationships between cryptocurrency prices and monetary policy indicators," Economics Series Working Papers 972, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    4. Gomez-Biscarri, Javier & Hualde, Javier, 2015. "Regression-based analysis of cointegration systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(1), pages 32-50.
    5. Søren Johansen, 2012. "The Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series Using Regression, Correlation and Cointegration," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 6(2), June.
    6. Reade, J. James & Volz, Ulrich, 2011. "Leader of the pack? German monetary dominance in Europe prior to EMU," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 239-250.
    7. Mirkov, Nikola & Sutter, Barbara, 2012. "Central Bank Reserves and the Yield Curve at the ZLB," Working Papers on Finance 1208, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    8. Katarina Juselius, 2011. "On the Role of Theory and Evidence in Macroeconomics," Chapters, in: John B. Davis & D. Wade Hands (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Recent Economic Methodology, chapter 17, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Osmani Teixeira De Carvalho Guillen & José Valentim Machado Vicente, 2011. "Characterizing The Brazilian Termstructure Of Interest Rates In A Cointegrated Var Model," Anais do XXXVIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 38th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 041, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    10. Rezitis, A.N. & Ahammad, S.M., 2015. "Investigating Agricultural Production Relations across Bangladesh, India and Pakistan Using Vector Error Correction and Markov-Switching Models," Agricultural Economics Research Review, Agricultural Economics Research Association (India), vol. 28(1).
    11. Johansen, Søren & Juselius, Katarina, 2014. "An asymptotic invariance property of the common trends under linear transformations of the data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 178(P2), pages 310-315.
    12. Katarina Juselius, 2009. "Time to reject the privileging of economic theory over empirical evidence? A Reply to Lawson (2009)," Discussion Papers 09-16, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    13. Søren Johansen & Katarina Juselius, 2010. "An Invariance Property of the Common Trends under Linear Transformations of the Data," Discussion Papers 10-30, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    14. David H. Bernstein & Bent Nielsen, 2019. "Asymptotic Theory for Cointegration Analysis When the Cointegration Rank Is Deficient," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-24, January.
    15. Rudra Sensarma & Indranil Bhattacharyya, 2016. "Measuring monetary policy and its impact on the bond market of an emerging economy," Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 109-130, July.
    16. Wilms, Ines & Croux, Christophe, 2016. "Forecasting using sparse cointegration," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1256-1267.
    17. Kevin Hoover & Katarina Juselius, 2012. "Experiments, Passive Observation and Scenario Analysis: Trygve Haavelmo and the Cointegrated Vector Autoregression," Discussion Papers 12-16, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    18. Sensarma, Rudra & Bhattacharyya, Indranil, 2016. "The impact of monetary policy on corporate bonds in India," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 587-602.
    19. Cavaliere, Giuseppe & Rahbek, Anders & Taylor, Robert, 2010. "Determination of the Number of Common Stochastic Trends Under Conditional Heteroskedasticity/Determinación del número de tendencias estocásticas comunes bajo heteroscedasticidad condicional," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 28, pages 519-552, Diciembre.
    20. Jian Luo & Xiaoxia Ye & May Hu, 2016. "Counter-Credit-Risk Yield Spreads: A Puzzle in China's Corporate Bond Market," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 16(2), pages 203-241, June.
    21. Giuseppe Cavaliere & Anders Rahbek & A. M. Robert Taylor, 2009. "Co-integration rank tests under conditional heteroskedasticity," Discussion Papers 09/02, University of Nottingham, Granger Centre for Time Series Econometrics.

    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. Zeno Rotondi, 2006. "The Macroeconomy and the Yield Curve: A Review of the Literature with Some New Evidence," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 65(2), pages 193-224, November.
    2. Guidolin, Massimo & Thornton, Daniel L., 2018. "Predictions of short-term rates and the expectations hypothesis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 636-664.
    3. 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.
    4. Yu-chin Chen & Kwok Ping Tsang, 2009. "A Macro-Finance Approach to Exchange Rate Determination," Working Papers UWEC-2009-24-R, University of Washington, Department of Economics, revised May 2010.
    5. Clive Bowsher & Roland Meeks, 2006. "High Dimensional Yield Curves: Models and Forecasting," Economics Series Working Papers 2006-FE-11, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    6. Diebold, Francis X. & Li, Canlin, 2006. "Forecasting the term structure of government bond yields," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 337-364, February.
    7. Moench, Emanuel, 2008. "Forecasting the yield curve in a data-rich environment: A no-arbitrage factor-augmented VAR approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 26-43, September.
    8. Christian Kascha & Carsten Trenkler, 2011. "Cointegrated VARMA models and forecasting US interest rates," ECON - Working Papers 033, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    9. Jardet, Caroline & Monfort, Alain & Pegoraro, Fulvio, 2013. "No-arbitrage Near-Cointegrated VAR(p) term structure models, term premia and GDP growth," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 389-402.
    10. Sarno, Lucio & Thornton, Daniel L. & Valente, Giorgio, 2007. "The Empirical Failure of the Expectations Hypothesis of the Term Structure of Bond Yields," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 81-100, March.
    11. Asgharian, Hossein & Liu, Lu & Larsson, Marcus, 2018. "Cross-border asset holdings and comovements in sovereign bond markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 189-206.
    12. Badics, Milan Csaba & Huszar, Zsuzsa R. & Kotro, Balazs B., 2023. "The impact of crisis periods and monetary decisions of the Fed and the ECB on the sovereign yield curve network," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    13. Vides, José Carlos & Golpe, Antonio A. & Iglesias, Jesús, 2020. "The EHTS and the persistence in the spread reconsidered. A fractional cointegration approach," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 124-137.
    14. Yung, Julieta, 2021. "Can interest rate factors explain exchange rate fluctuations?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 34-56.
    15. Jorge de Andrés Sánchez, 2004. "Un Análisis de la Curva de Rendimientos en el Mercado de Deuda Pública Española a Medio y Largo Plazo en el Período 1993-2004," Economic Analysis Working Papers (2002-2010). Atlantic Review of Economics (2011-2016), Colexio de Economistas de A Coruña, Spain and Fundación Una Galicia Moderna, vol. 3, pages 1-30, October.
    16. Hansen, Anne Lundgaard, 2021. "Modeling persistent interest rates with double-autoregressive processes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    17. Evangelos Salachas & Georgios P. Kouretas & Nikiforos T. Laopodis, 2024. "The term structure of interest rates and economic activity: Evidence from the COVID‐19 pandemic," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(4), pages 1018-1041, July.
    18. Bowsher, Clive G. & Meeks, Roland, 2008. "The Dynamics of Economic Functions: Modeling and Forecasting the Yield Curve," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(484), pages 1419-1437.
    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. Richard H. Clarida & Lucio Sarno & Mark P. Taylor & Giorgio Valente, 2006. "The Role of Asymmetries and Regime Shifts in the Term Structure of Interest Rates," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(3), pages 1193-1224, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Yield Curve; Term Structure of Interest Rates; Expectations Hypothesis; Cointegration; Common Trends;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

    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:zbw:ifwedp:7214. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.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.