Announcement E¤ects on the Slope and Curvature of the Yield CurveYield Curve

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 p-Value

Coefficient

1Y 2Y 3Y 4Y 5Y 6Y 7Y 8Y 9Y 10Y

Time to Maturity

Figure 3.8: Announcement e¤ect of the manufacturing ISM in the US on interest rates of German government bonds with maturities between one and ten years.

ISM Index (…gure B.15 in appendix B.4.2). The non-manufacturing ISM Index only has a signi…cant impact on bonds with maturities of at least four years, whereas the level of signi…cance is lower than for the manufacturing ISM Index. Furthermore, the magnitude of the e¤ect is smaller than of the manufacturing ISM Index.

Another sentiment indicator for the US economy that has a high in‡uence on …nancial markets is the Chicago Purchasing Manager Index (…gure B.16 in appendix B.4.2).

Yields of German government bonds with maturities between two and …ve years increase around 0.4% due to a surprise of one standard deviation, whereas all other maturities increase around 0.3%, when the Chicago Purchasing Manager Index surprises on the upside.

3.7.2 Announcement E¤ects on the Slope and Curvature of the

an upward sloping yield curve precedes an upswing in the economy and an inverse yield curve indicates a recession. Hence, positive macroeconomic news should increase the slope of the yield curve and vice versa.

In order to quantify the short term reaction of the slope of the yield curve to macro-economic news, the dependent variable in this part of the event study is the daily percentage change of the slope of the yield curve Slope_t at time t, which is de…ned as the di¤erence between the yield of bonds with maturities of ten years and one year (Slopet = 10Y_t 1Y_t). The explanatory variables and the framework of the regres-sion are the same as in the empirical analysis of the reaction of single maturities to macroeconomic news (equation 3.10). The coe¢ cient _1i in equation 3.12 quanti…es the percentage change of the slope Slope_t at time t due to a surprise S_it of one standard deviation in the release of indicator i at time t. The sumPK

k=1 k+1;iS_ik;t captures the e¤ects of K simultaneously released indicators:

Slope_t Slope_{t 1}

Slope_t 100 = ₀+ _1iSit+ XK k=1

k+1;iSi_k;t+eit: (3.12) Another aspect of this event study is to quantify the reaction of the curvature of the yield curve due to the release of macroeconomic news. The reaction of the curvature of the yield curve cannot be related to economic theory as easily as the reaction of the slope.

Nevertheless, these results are reported and brie‡y discussed, because the curvature of the term structure of interest rates can be part of a trading strategy or investment decision. In order to measure the e¤ect of macroeconomic surprises on the curvature of the yield curve, the dependent variable Curvature_t at timet is de…ned as two times the interest rate of the medium part of the yield curve minus the sum of the short and long end of the yield curve: Curvature_t = 2 5Y_t 1Y_t 10Y_t.³⁵ In equation 3.13, _1i quanti…es the impact of indicator i on the daily percentage change of the curvature of the yield curve Curvature_t at time t, when the release of indicator i di¤ers from the

35Whereas the applied de…nition of the slope variable Slope_t is widely used in the litera-ture, the curvature variable Curvaturet is based on Diebold and Li (2005). To calculate the curvature of the term structure of interest rates, Diebold and Li use the three-month rate to approximate the short end of the yield curve, the two-year rate to approximate the medium part and the ten-year rate to approximate the long end: Curvaturet= 2 2Yt 3Mt 10Yt.

Indicator Slope Curvature

Germany Unemployed - -65.932 / (0.017)

Unemployment Rate - 71.361 / (0.004)

PPI, mom - 115.768 / (0.023)

PPI, yoy - -134.578 / (0.010)

ZEW Index - 79.977 / (0.068)

Eurozone Current Account - -33.756 / (0.013)

Retail Sales, mom - -22.419 / (0.021)

Retail Sales, yoy - 22.533 / (0.030)

USA Average Hourly Earnings - 8.552 / (0.090)

Capacitiy Utilisation 2.227 / (0.064) -Industrial Production -2.058 / (0.079) -Productivity, …nal 3.115 / (0.090) -Unit Labour Costs 8.327 / (0.001)

-CPI -1.341 / (0.046)

-CPI core 1.993 / (0.021)

-PPI core 4.385 / (0.008)

-ISM non-manufacturing - 48.511 / (0.053)

Chicago PMI 1.868 / (0.076)

-Table 3.7: Results of the impact (percent) of German, European and US macroeconomic indicators on the slope and curvature of the German yield curve, which are signi…cant at least at the ten percent level (p-values in parenthesis).

expectations by one standard deviation (Sit). The e¤ects of K simultaneously released indicators are taken into account by PK

k=1 k+1;iS_ik;t: Curvature_t Curvature_{t 1}

Curvature_t 100 = ₀+ _1iS_it+ XK k=1

k+1;iS_ik;t+e_it: (3.13)

The signi…cant e¤ects of German, European and US macroeconomic indicators on the slope and curvature of the German yield curve for government bonds are summarized in table 3.7.³⁶ None of the German indicators signi…cantly in‡uences the daily change of the slope of the yield curve. In contrast to that, a small number of German indicators has a signi…cant impact on the curvature of the yield curve. Concerning the indicators for real economic activity, the estimate of the e¤ect of the German number of people unemployed forces the curvature to decline by 65.93%, when the outcome of this indicator has been

36The whole set of results of the impact of the macroeconomic indicators on the slope and curvature of the term structure of interest rates can be found in appendix B.2.

underestimated by one standard deviation. The estimation result of the impact of the Unemployment Rate in Germany indicates an increase in the curvature due to a surprise of one standard deviation by 71.36%. Among the price indicators, the German Producer Price Index has a signi…cant impact on the curvature. The impact of the month-on-month change of the producer prices on the curvature of the term structure is positive (115.77%), whereas the impact of the year-on-year change is negative (-134.58%), when the release has been underestimated by one standard deviation. Furthermore, a positive surprise in the sentiment indicator ZEW-Index causes the curvature of the German yield curve to react positively (79.98%).

None of the European macroeconomic indicators a¤ects the slope of the German yield curve and only three a¤ect the curvature. If the Current Account for the Eurozone is better than predicted, the curvature of the yield curve decreases signi…cantly by 33.76%.

The reaction of the curvature on surprises of the month-on-month change of European Retail Sales is negative (-22.42%), whereas the impact of the year-on-year change is positive (22.53%).

In contrast to German and European macroeconomic indicators, US macroeconomic indicators in‡uence the slope of the German yield curve for government bonds. A pos-itive surprise of real economic activity should increase the slope of the yield curve and vice versa. With varying size, the indicators for real economic activity Capacity Utili-sation (2.23%), Productivity (3.12%) and Unit Labour Costs (8.33%) increase the slope of the yield curve, when the release surprises positively. The only indicator for real economic activity that reduces the slope of the yield curve is the release of Industrial Production (-2.06%) and therefore does not con…rm economic theory. The reason might be that Industrial Production is a contemporary indicator for real economic activity.

In contrast to that, a leading indicator, for example the sentiment indicator Chicago Purchasing Manager Index, in‡uences investors’expectations of long term interest rates (1.87%). The US price indicators Core Consumer Price Index (1.99%) and Core Pro-ducer Price Index (4.39%) increase the slope of the yield curve. The headline Consumer Price Index decreases the slope (-1.34%).

The curvature of the yield curve is positively in‡uenced by the release of the US indicator for real economic activity Average Hourly Earnings (8.55%) and by the release

of the sentiment indicator non-manufacturing ISM (48.51%). Accordingly, these two macroeconomic indicators enhance the curvature of the yield curve of German govern-ment bonds because of an increase of the sum of the di¤erences between the short end and the medium part and between the long end and the medium part of the yield curve.