Olesya V. Grishchenko

Inflation Risk Premium: Evidence from the TIPS Market

“Inflation-indexed securities would appear to be the most direct source of information about inflation expectations and real interest rates” (Bernanke, 2004). In this paper we study the term structure of real interest rates, expected inflation and inflation risk premia using data on prices of Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) over the period 2000-2007. The estimates of the 10-year inflation risk premium are between 11 and 22 basis points for 2000-2007 depending on the proxy used for the expected inflation. Furthermore, we find that the inflation risk premium is time varying and, specifically, negative in the first half (which might be due to either concerns of deflation or low liquidity of the TIPS market), but positive in the second half of the sample. JEL Classification: E31, E43, E44

The Inflation Risk Premium:Evidence from the TIPS Market

This article estimates inflation risk premia using data on prices of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) from 2000 to 2008. The estimation approach is arbitrage-free, largely model-free, and easy to implement. It also distinguishes between TIPS yields and real yields by explicitly taking into account the three-month indexation lag of TIPS in the analysis. In addition, we consider three measures of TIPS liquidity, including one new measure based on TIPS prices only. We estimate the liquidity premium to be around 13 basis points over the full sample but substantially higher in the first subperiod. We find that the inflation risk premium is time-varying and, on average, considerably lower than suggested by various structural models. Depending on the proxy used for expected inflation, the unconditional 10-year inflation risk premium ranges from –9 basis points to 4 basis points over the full sample, and between 1 basis point and 6 basis points over the 2004–2008 subperiod.

The Role of Heterogeneity in Asset Pricing: The Effect of a Clustering Approach

In this article we use a novel clustering approach to study the role of heterogeneity in asset pricing. We present evidence that the equity premium is consistent with a stochastic discount factor (SDF) calculated as the average of the household clusters’ intertemporal marginal rates of substitution in the 1984–2002 period. The result is driven by the skewness of the cluster-based cross-sectional distribution of consumption growth, but cannot be explained by the cross-sectional variance and mean alone. We find that nine clusters are sufficient to explain the equity premium with relative risk aversion coefficient equal to six. The result is robust to various averaging schemes of cluster-based consumption growth used to construct the SDF. Lastly, the analysis reveals that standard approximation schemes of the SDF using individual household data produce unreliable results, implying a negative SDF.

An Empirical Investigation of Consumption-Based Asset Pricing Models with Stochastic Habit Formation

We econometrically estimate and test a consumption-based asset pricing model with stochastic internal habit. The model departs from existing deterministic internal habit models by introducing shocks to the coefficients in the distributed lag specification of consumption habit and consequently an additional shock to the marginal rate of substitution. Habit shocks are persistent and provide an additional source of time variation in expected returns. Using returns on aggregate market and Treasury bond portfolios, we show that stochastic internal habit models provide a better explanation of time variation in expected returns than models with either deterministic habit or stochastic external habit.

The Joint Dynamics of U.S. and Euro-area Inflation Rates: Expectations and Time-varying Uncertainty

We use several U.S. and euro-area surveys of professional forecasters to estimate a dynamic factor model of inflation with time-varying uncertinty. We obtain survey-consistent distributions of future inflation at any horizon, both in the United States and in the euro area. Our methodology allows us to compute, in closed form, survey-consistent measures of inflation expectations, inflation uncertainty, inflation expectations anchoring, deflation probabilities and U.S. and euro-area inflation co-movements. Our results suggest strong commonalities between inflation dynamics in the two economies.

Term Structure of Interest Rates with Short-Run and Long-Run Risks

Bond returns are time-varying and predictable. What economic forces drive this variation? To answer this long-standing question, we propose a consumption-based model with recursive preferences, long-run risks, and inflation non-neutrality. Our model offers two important insights. First, our model matches well the post-1990 nominal upward-sloping U.S. Treasury yield curve. Second, consistent with our models implication, variance risk premium based on the U.S. interest rate derivatives data emerges as a strong predictor for short-horizon Treasury excess returns, above and beyond the predictive power of other popular factors. In the model equilibrium, the variance risk premium is related to the short-run risks in the economy, while standard forward-rate-based factors are associated with long-run risks in the economy.