In recent years, the yield curve has flattened and shifted downwards. The flattening has received a lot of attention because it is viewed as a recessionary signal. In this article, we argue that the fact that the curve has shifted downwards as well as flattening indicates that the yield curve may have changed regime. This regime shift seems to have been caused by lower inflation expectations and lower risk premia. In an environment of lower inflation and lower risk premia, the yield curve may occasionally invert without signalling a recession as it did in 1966. 1. The recessionary signal Inversions of the yield curve have often been used to predict recessions. The 10-year to 3-month spread between US Treasury yields became briefly negative twice this year in March and the May (figure 1), spurring debate about whether this was signalling a forthcoming recession. The negative spread was mainly the result of a decrease of the 10-year yield – from 2.8 per cent on 1 March to 2.4 per cen...
There is a rich literature on Quantitative Easing (QE) but less so on its unwinding. QE was initiated in 2001 in Japan, followed by the US in 2008 after the Global Financial Crisis, and there has been time to evaluate it, while there has not been any sustained unwinding of QE so far. The only episode that approaches an unwinding of QE is the so-called ‘Taper Tantrum’ in the United States in 2013, when Treasury yields surged on the news that the Federal Reserve would be slowing down its purchases of bonds. In this article, I survey the literature on QE and use the findings to discuss possible exit strategies. While there is little consensus among central bankers on the optimal exit strategy, what stands out is that the road to unwinding will probably be a long and uncertain one, and central banks may even keep large amount of government bonds permanently on their balance sheet. The channels of Quantitative Easing Quantitative easing is the process whereby a central bank purchas...
The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to have a significant impact on medium-run inflation expectations particularly if considered in conjunction with large fiscal stimuli, ultra-loose monetary policies and the risk of de-globalization. The recent review of monetary policy framework by the Federal Reserve, focusing on an average inflation target strategy, highlights how difficult it can be to keep inflation expectations well-anchored when secular factors are at play (i.e. decline in the neutral real rate of interest , r*) and a shock of the scale of COVID-19 hits the economy, with ensuing uncertainty. This blog post was written with my colleague Corrado Macchiarelli and also published on NIESR's blog and LSE's blog . Several factors could “in theory” light inflation expectations up over the medium-term There are many factors that play into the formation of inflation expectations. The large government stimuli, for instance, may have the effect of increasing the ba...
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