E43 - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and EffectsReturn

The expectations hypothesis is one of the most natural theories that attempt to explain the relationship between short and long-term interest rates. This paper summarizes the preconditions necessary for a meaningful analysis of the expectations contained in interest rates. These preconditions are further tested on five selected interest rate products. The most appropriate candidates for both the term structure analysis and the testing of the expectations hypothesis are the quotations of interest rate swaps OIS. With certain limitations, the IRS rates and the yields of highest-rated government bonds are also applicable.

The paper deals with G. Rudebusch's paper Federal Reserve Interest Rate Targeting, Rational Expectations and the Term Structure published in Journal of Monetary Economics in 1995. I define main resources of the study, discuss the most important parts of Rudebusch's paper and present key conclusions about the impact of central banks on the dynamics of money market interest rates. Besides I point out some problems that can influence our understanding of the behavior of interest rates. First of all this is the problem of instability of the period in which it is possible to make the correct prediction of the value of targeted interest rates. Hereafter I call attention to few technical aspects of managing the open market operations and last but not least I stress the problems of potential instability of term premium.