Interest rates
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November 11, 2008
The Market Impact of Forward-Looking Policy Statements: Transparency vs. Predictability
Central banks continuously strive to improve how they communicate to financial markets and the public in order to increase transparency. For this reason, many central banks have begun to include guidance on the policy rate in the form of forward-looking statements in their communications. This article examines the debate over the usefulness of providing such statements from both theoretical and empirical standpoints. The evidence presented here suggests that the use of forward-looking statements in Bank of Canada communications has made the Bank more predictable, but not necessarily more transparent. -
McCallum Rules, Exchange Rates, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates
McCallum (1994a) proposes a monetary rule where policymakers have some tendency to resist rapid changes in exchange rates to explain the forward premium puzzle. -
Combining Canadian Interest-Rate Forecasts
Model risk is a constant danger for financial economists using interest-rate forecasts for the purposes of monetary policy analysis, portfolio allocations, or risk-management decisions. Use of multiple models does not necessarily solve the problem as it greatly increases the work required and still leaves the question "which model forecast should one use?" -
Macroeconomic Determinants of the Term Structure of Corporate Spreads
We investigate the macroeconomic determinants of corporate spreads using a no-arbitrage technique. Structural shocks are identified by a New-Keynesian model. Treasury bonds are priced in an affine model with time-varying risk premia. -
December 11, 2007
The Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates: Implications for Monetary Policy
One of the most important factors that must be considered if countries are thinking about lowering the target level of inflation much below 2 per cent is the zero interest bound. Targeting inflation rates that are too low, the authors note, may restrict the ability of monetary policy to respond to economic shocks by limiting the amount by which interest rates can be eased. -
Examining Simple Joint Macroeconomic and Term-Structure Models: A Practitioner's Perspective
The primary objective of this paper is to compare a variety of joint models of the term structure of interest rates and the macroeconomy. -
Term Structure Transmission of Monetary Policy
Under bond-rate transmission of monetary policy, the authors show that a generalized Taylor Principle applies, in which the average anticipated path of policy responses to inflation is subject to a lower bound of unity. This result helps explain how bond rates may exhibit stable responses to inflation, even in periods of passive policy. -
Price Formation and Liquidity Provision in Short-Term Fixed Income Markets
Differences in market structures may affect the manner in which fundamental information is incorporated into prices. High levels of quote and trade transparency plus substantial quoting obligations in European government securities markets ensure that prices are informationally efficient. -
A No-Arbitrage Analysis of Macroeconomic Determinants of Term Structures and the Exchange Rate
We study the joint dynamics of macroeconomic variables, bond yields, and the exchange rate in an empirical two-country New-Keynesian model complemented with a no-arbitrage term structure model. With Canadian and US data, we are able to study the impact of macroeconomic shocks from both countries on their yield curves and the exchange rate.