The application of sovereign bond spreads: The case of France, Germany and Great Britain
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference Mathematical Methods in Economics 2014 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Economy |
| Keywords | GDP prediction; yield curve; slope; spread |
| Description | The yield curve – specifically the spread between long term and short term interest rates is a valuable forecasting tool. It is simple to use and significantly outperforms other financial and macroeconomic indicators in predicting recessions two to six quarters ahead. The steepness of the yield curve should be an excellent indicator of a possible future economic activity. A rise in the short rate tends to flatten the yield curve as well as to slow down real growth the near term. This paper aims to analyze the dependence between slope of the yield curve and an economic activity of France, Germany and Great Britain between the years 2000 and 2013. The slope of the yield curve can be measured as the yield spread between sovereign 10-year bonds and sovereign 3-month bonds. The natural and probably the most popular measure of economic growth is by GDP growth, taken quarterly. The results showed that the best predictive lag is a lag of five quarters. The theory says that it should be lag of four quarters. The results presented also confirm that 10-year and 3-month yield spread has significant predictive power for real GDP growth after financial crisis. These findings can be beneficial for investors and provide further evidence of the potential usefulness of the yield curve spreads as indicators of the future economic activity. |
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