We forecast economic growth in New Zealand using yield curve data within simple statistical models; i.e. typical OLS relationships that have been well-established for other countries, and related VAR specifcations. We find that the yield curve data has significant forecasting power in absolute...

The hypothesis that New Zealand 90-day bank bill futures rates are an unbiased predictor of 90-day bank bill rates is tested by applying the single-equation method of Stock and Watson (1993) to quarterly data from 1989 to 1997. The results do not reject the unbiasedness hypothesis for the one...

This article establishes that most yield curve models within the popular Nelson and Siegel (1987, hereafter NS) class may be obtained as a formal Taylor approximation to the dynamic component of the generic Gaussian affine term structure model outlined in Dai and Singleton (2002). That...

The interest rate which corresponds to neutral monetary policy settings in New Zealand appears to have trended downwards since at least the stabilisation of inflation in 1992. We present several alternative estimates of a time varying neutral real interest rate (NRR) in state space models, which...

We conduct a high frequency event analysis to estimate the effects of monetary policy surprises, data surprises, and central bank verbal statements on the New Zealand-US dollar and the New Zealand-Australian dollar exchange rates. We find data surprises and monetary policy surprises have...

The hypothesis that a forward term-premium (FTP) exists between forward 1- day rates calculated from the New Zealand bank-risk yield curve and the corresponding ex-post Official Cash Rate (OCR) is tested by applying a single equation method for a cointegrated system to daily data from March 1999...

Forward rates in the money market are systematically higher than realised spot rates, reflecting an unobservable term premium. This paper uses a Kalman filter specification to produce time-varying estimates of the term premia in New Zealand and Australia. Three time series specifications are...

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) is regarded as one of the most transparent central banks in the world. Recent research suggests that one benefit of such transparency is that financial markets better anticipate a central bank's reaction to incoming data, and in relation, do not over-react...

This paper quantifies the impact of monetary policy shocks on asset markets in the United States and gauges the usefulness of a shadow short rate as a measure of conventional and unconventional monetary policy shocks. Monetary policy surprises are found to have had a larger impact on asset...

When nominal interest rates are near their zero lower bound (ZLB), as in many developed economies at the time of writing, it is theoretically untenable to apply the popular class of Gaussian affine term structure models (GATSMs) given their inherent material probabilities of negative interest...