Equality of Real Returns on Canadian and US Treasury Bills: A Fractional Cointegration Analysis

This paper empirically analyzes the long memory relationship between the real returns on Canadian and US Treasury bills. A fractional cointegration approach, instead of conventional integer integration (unit root) and cointegration approaches, is used in analyzing the relationship. The advantage of fractionally integrated models is that they allow a smooth transition from a stationary process to a unit-root process. Furthermore, such models embody unit-root models as a special case. The models are therefore more general and appropriate for empirical analysis. By using fractionally integrated models, one also resolves the problems of an inconsistency in test results associated with using unit root and cointegration approaches. Briefly, it is found that the real returns on Canadian and US Treasury bills are fractionally integrated and the order of integration is significantly less than unity. Furthermore, the difference between the real returns follows a stationary process. This indicates that the Canadian and the US capital markets as well as product markets are well integrated. Furthermore, the domestic monetary authorities will not be able to influence the domestic real interest rate independent of the other market in the long-run.     

Do Interest Rates Follow Unit-Root Processes? Evidence from Cross-Maturity Treasury Bill Yields

Abstract. It is widely reported in the literature that interest rates follow integrated processes. Many empirical studies have, in fact, taken this result as a maintained hypothesis. This article demonstrates that the failure to reject the hypothesis that interest rates contain a unit root may be due to the severe power problem of standard test procedures in small samples. We analyze a panel of cross-maturity Treasury-bill yield series by employing a panel-based test. This test exploits cross-maturity variations of the data to improve estimation efficiency and is more powerful than standard tests for unit roots. The critical values of the test statistics are computed by Monte Carlo simulations tailored to our samples. It is found that the null hypothesis that each yield series contains a unit root can be decisively rejected. Our findings cast some doubt on previous studies that rely on the nonstationarity assumption of interest rates.     

Expected Inflation and Interest Rates in a Multi-asset Model: A Note

This paper analyzes the effect of expected inflation on nominal interest rates, in a theoretical model with money and two different bond types. The inclusion of three assets instead of the usual two causes the effect of expected inflation on the interest rates to deviate from unity. Depending on the sizes of the wealth and interest rate effects on the various asset demands, the effect of expected inflation could even be negative. Several special cases are also considered, and the implications for the interpretation of empirical results are discussed.     

Expectations,Surprises and Treasury Bill Rates: 1960–82

Changes in six-month bill rates over semiannual periods in the 1960s and 1970s are successfully related to expected changes and to surprises. The latter include unanticipated changes in expected inflation, in the growth of industrial production and base money, and in inflation uncertainty. Estimation of the basic equation through the middle of 1983 does not suggest any change in structure. Moreover the equation “explains” 60 percent of the extraordinarily high level of real rates since late 1980, largely owing to an excess of unexpected net increases in anticipated inflation over actual increases. Our estimates provide some support for the expectations theory; there appears to be information content in six–month forward rates. While this content is swamped by the impact of surprises in equations explaining rate changes in terms of forward rates alone, the content is clear when proxies for the surprises are included in the equations.     

Expected Inflation, Interest Rates, and Stock Returns

This paper documents a long-lived asymmetrical relationship between interest rate changes and subsequent stock returns. Drops in interest rates are followed by twelve months of excess stock returns, while increases in interest rates have little effect. The results are robust to the choices of short-term interest rate and stock index. These findings cannot be explained by Geske and Roll's [10] reversed causality argument; nor do they appear to result from periods of unusual interest rates or stock returns. Since interest rate changes are generally used as proxies for changes in expected inflation, the results provide new insights into previous research on inflation and stock returns, and there are important implications for the literature on time-varying risk premia.     

The Relation Between Default-Free Interest Rates and Expected Economic Growth Is Stronger Than You Think

The relation between default-free interest rates and expected economic growth is substantially stronger than suggested by extant literature. Futures-implied Treasury bill yield spreads are more highly correlated with future real consumption, investment, and GNP growth than spot spreads. This stronger relation arises because using futures removes a component of the spot term structure that covaries negatively with real economic growth. Treasury forward rates from spot bills contain a premium for the risk that short-sellers will default. This risk premium is negatively related to expected economic growth.     

The Causality Effects of the Federal Reserve's Monetary Policy on U.S. and Eurodollar Interest Rates

Previous studies argue that U.S. interest rates will become more sensitive to changes in eurodollar rates as international financial-market integration increases. However, the empirical results of these studies are suspect because they select their subperiods in an ad hoc manner and ignore the different trading hours of the U.S. and London markets. This study adjusts for the markets' different trading hours and uses Goldfeld and Quandt's switching regression technique to show that the causal relation between U.S. CD rates and eurodollar rates is impacted by the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. Because the latest subperiod exhibits uni-directional causality (i.e., U.S. interest rates cause changes in eurodollar rates), the results cast doubt on the implicit assumption made in the literature that interest-rate causality is only affected by increasing levels of financial-market integration.     

The Structural Relation Between Mortgage and Market Interest Rates

This paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between primary and secondary mortgage markets and the short-term and long-term market interest rates. Using a series of monthly data on fixed rate mortgage rates and GNMA rates, we explore the dependence and speed of adjustment in these primary and secondary mortgage rates to each other as well as to the long and short-term government rates. The results indicate that residential mortgage rates in general, appear to follow the long-term rate and are not very sensitive to movements in the short-term interest rate.     

The Relationship between Federal Deficits and Real Interest Rates

Real interest rates fluctuated a great deal since the 1970s. In the 1980s federal deficits accelerated and their impact on both nominal and real interest rates gained lots of attention. Based on monthly and quarterly data from January 1971 to December 1997 it is found that federal deficits had significant positive effect on the real interest rates: Personal income or consumption are found to have significant positive impact on the real interest rates, whereas expected inflation and money supply are found to have negative impact on the real interest rates. These findings are consistent with the conventional economic theory.     

市场利率与金融监管的关系研究

运用供求关系原理,设定计量模型,探讨中央银行金融监管行为对市场利率的影响,实证分析发现:短期内中央银行可以更好地控制货币供给量,进而影响市场利率,但通过货币需求量改变市场利率的效果不是很明显.     

A Test of Integration and Cointegration of Commercial Mortgage Rates

Little empirical work examines the extent to which commercial mortgage markets are integrated into broader capital markets. We use time series data on commercial mortgage yields and yields on comparable-maturity Treasury securities to identify a long-run cointegrating relationship between the two yield series. Our empirical evidence suggest that, while the yield on commercial mortgage is cointegrated with that on comparable-maturity Treasury securities, the cointegrating relationship is far less than that found between the yield on residential mortgage rates and that on comparable-maturity Treasury securities during 1980–1990 time period. However, our results also show that the spate of commercial mortgage securitization that began in early 1991 may have been a market-integrating force and caused the commercial mortgage market to become more integrated into broader capital markets. Indeed, our results suggest that changes in capital market rates are now much more rapidly reflected in commercial mortgage rates than in the 1980–1990 time period, although there is a lag.     

Real Interest Rates and Inflation: An Ex-Ante Empirical Analysis

We develop a method of measuring ex-ante real interest rates using prices of index and nominal bonds. Employing this method and newly available data, we directly test the Fisher hypothesis that the real rate of interest is independent of inflation expectations. We find a negative correlation between ex-ante real interest rates and expected inflation. This contradicts the Fisher hypothesis but is consistent with the theories of Mundell and Tobin, Darby and Feldstein, and Stulz. We also find that nominal interest rates include an inflation risk premium that is positively related to a proxy for inflation uncertainty.     

中美利率与汇率联动关系的实证研究:2005～2008

在经济金融全球化的今天,尤其伴随我国金融业全面开放、人民币国际化进程的逐步推进,中美利率与汇率联动关系的研究显得日益重要。本文在借鉴经济学有关利率和汇率联动关系的理论模型和传导机制的基础上,运用计量经济学理论模型和统计软件Eviews5.0,通过对利率与汇率经济变量的平稳性检验、协整关系检验、因果关系检验、冲击反应分析和方差分解检验,较为全面地对中美利率与汇率的联动关系进行了实证分析。通过实证分析,我们发现中美利率和汇率在长期内存在协整关系,但短期联动关系不足,我国应加快推进利率市场化进程,积极完善人民币汇率形成机制,使我国利率政策和汇率政策相互协调,促进宏观经济向内外均衡发展。     

量增价跌,服务实体经济能力进一步提升——2019年票据市场运行回顾与展望

2019年,票据规模继续扩大,服务实体经济能力进一步增强;票据市场利率持续下行,有效降低实体经济融资成本;票据业务进一步向经济发达地区和高新产业集中,创新产品运行良好。展望2020年,随着票据市场基础设施的不断完善和相关制度的建立健全,票据的功能定位更趋明确,票据市场环境将继续优化,其支持实体经济发展的能力和效率将进一步提升。     

Pricing Options under Stochastic Interest Rates: A New Approach

We will generalize the Black-Scholes option pricing formula by incorporating stochastic interest rates. Although the existing literature has obtained some formulae for stock options under stochastic interest rates, the closed-form solutions have been known only under the Gaussian (Merton type) interest rate processes. We will show that an explicit solution, which is an extended Black-Scholes formula under stochastic interest rates in certain asymptotic sense, can be obtained by extending the asymptotic expansion approach when the interest rate volatility is small. This method, called the small-disturbance asymptotics for Itô processes, has recently been developed by Kunitomo and Takahashi (1995, 1998) and Takahashi (1997). We found that the extended Black-Scholes formula is decomposed into the original Black-Scholes formula under the deterministic interest rates and the adjustment term driven by the volatility of interest rates. We will illustrate the numerical accuracy of our new formula by using the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross model for the interest rates.     

Are Expected Inflation Rates and Expected Real Rates Negatively Correlated? A Long‐Run Test of the Mundell‐Tobin Hypothesis

Some empirical evidence suggests that the expected real interest and expected inflation rates are negatively correlated. This hypothesis of negative correlation is sometimes known as the Mundell‐Tobin hypothesis. In this article we reinvestigate this negative relation from a long‐term point of view using cointegration analysis. The data on the historical interest rate on T‐bills and the inflation rate indicate that the Mundell‐Tobin hypothesis does not hold in the long run for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. We also obtain similar results using the real interest rate on index‐linked gilt traded in the United Kingdom.     

在岸与离岸市场人民币利率联动性分析

本文通过采用Granger因果检验和AM（1）-GARCH（1,1）模型分析了上海银行间同业拆放利率（Shibor）与香港人民币同业拆借利率（CNY Hibor）之间的联动性。结论表明：30天Shibor和CNY Hibor互为Granger因果关系,隔夜、7天和14天Shibor是CNY Hibor的Granger原因;在岸对离岸市场人民币利率的影响强于离岸对在岸市场人民币利率的影响。