Peso problem explanations for term structure anomalies

We investigate whether term structure anomalies in U.S. data may be due to a generalized peso problem, in which a high-interest-rate regime occurred less frequently in the U.S. sample than was rationally anticipated. We formalize this idea by estimating a regime-switching model of short-term interest rates with data from seven countries. Under the small-sample distributions generated by the model, the expectations hypothesis is rejected. When we allow moderate time variation in term premiums, the term-premium dynamics interact with peso-problem effects to generate small-sample distributions more consistent with the data. Nonetheless, our model cannot fully account for U.S. term structure anomalies. r 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. JEL classificaion: E43; C22; G15