Roland Ricart

The Expectations Hypothesis of the Term Structure: Tests on US, German, French, and UK Euro-Rates

This paper deals with tests of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure on French, German, UK and US short-term interest rates. Three tests are examined: the first is based on forward rates and the other two are based on the interest rates spread. First, we show that the puzzle highlighted by Campbell and Shiller (1991) for US data does not hold in the cases of French and UK short-term rates. Second, we propose tests for the expectations hypothesis based on error-correction specifications. These tests are shown to be much more favorable for the theory and the initial puzzle disappears.

La théorie des anticipations de la structure par terme: test à partir des titres publics français

This paper focuses on the expectations hypothesis of the term structure on long-term government bonds. Adopting the approach proposed by Campbell and Shiller [1991], we obtain ambiguous results, similar to the puzzle highlighted by these authors with US data. Analyzing stationarity of excess returns and error-correction models gives more details on these results: the expectations hypothesis is broadly accepted when holding returns are considered whereas it is systematically rejected for rollover returns.