What do Bond Investors Learn from Macroeconomic News?

Abstract

Macroeconomic data releases drive US bond yields primarily through the term premium instead of the expectation channel. The evidence exploits a monthly specification for yields embedding the impacts of news identified from high-frequency data. To match the facts, we develop and calibrate a no-arbitrage model where investors learn about future monetary policy using data releases with imperfect information. If macro news carry perfect information, the model predicts that the bonds’ Sharpe ratio decreases and the term premium declines by half for every maturity, suggesting that central bank’s communication can lower the term premium and financing costs across the economy.

Keywords: Term Structure, Macro-Finance, Variance Decomposition

JEL Classification: C32, E43, G12