Unit roots,interest rate spreads,and inflation forecasts |
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Authors: | Kevin Jacques |
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Affiliation: | Economic and Policy Analysis Division , Comptroller of the Currency , Washington, DC , 20219 , USA |
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Abstract: | Recent research suggests that long-term interest rate spreads provide information that can be useful in forecasting inflation, but that the spread between the three-month and six-month Treasury bill rates appears to have little forecasting ability. This paper uses the concepts of unit roots and cointegration to examine the failure of the short-term T-bill spread to forecast inflation. The results suggest that the interest rate spread has little forecasting value because inflation and the interest rate spread exhibit distinctly different time-series properties. |
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