Financial Factors, Macroeconomic Information and the Expectations Theory of the Term Structure of Interest Rates

Abstract

In this paper we concentrate on the hypothesis that the empirical
rejections of the Expectations Theory (ET) of the term structure of interest
rates can be caused by improper modelling of expectations. Our
starting point is an interesting anomaly found by Campbell-Shiller (1987),
when by taking a VAR approach they abandon limited information
approach to test the ET, in which realized returns are taken as a proxy for
expected returns. We use financial factors and macroeconomic information
to construct a test of the theory based on simulating investors'
effort to use the model in 'real time' to forecast future monetary policy
rates. Our findings suggest that the importance of fluctuations of risk
premia in explaining the deviation from the ET is reduced when some
forecasting model for short-term rates is adopted and a proper evaluation
of uncertainty associated to policy rates forecast is considered.