U.S.-European Interest Rate Linkage: A Time Series Analysis for West Germany, Switzerland, and the United States.

The authors investigate whether there was an international linkage of interest rates between the United States, West Germany, and Switzerland during the period of flexible exchange rates, 1974-84. Euro-market rates and bond-market rates are considered during the two subperiods of falling and increasing U.S. Dollar/DM exchange rates, 1974 to 1978 and 1979 to 1984. Spectral analysis and Granger causality tests are applied and trivariate autoregressive models are estimated. It is shown that a strong linkage exists during the second period, but during the first subperiod there was no, or only a weakly-pronounced, linkage. Copyright 1987 by MIT Press.