The yield of ten year T-bonds: stumbling towards a ‘good’ forecast

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2007-02-21T14:43:16Z

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Abstract

Due to their status as “the” benchmark yield for the world’s largest government bond market and its importance for US monetary policy, the interest in a “good” forecast of the constant maturity yield of the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond (“T-bond yields”) is immense. This paper assesses three univariate time series models for forecasting the yield of T-bonds: It shows that a simple SETAR model proves to be superior to the random walk and an ARMA model. However, dividing the sample of bond yields, dating from 1962 to 2005, into a training sample and a test sample reveals the forecast to be biased. A new bias-corrected version is developed and forecasts for March 2005 to February 2006 are presented. In addition to point estimates forecast limits are also given. JEL subject classifications: E47, C52

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10-year yield, Bias-correction, Non-linear time series, TAR model, T-bond, Times series

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