Global factors, international spillovers, and the term structure of interest rates : new evidence for Asian countries

This paper provides new evidence about the role of common global factors exploring the existence of structural breaks in the long-run trend of the term structure and analyzes the spillover effects from unconventional monetary policiesrecently implemented by major industrialized countries. For a panel of four Asian economies (Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea), we show that, accounting for the role of global liquidity factors, parameters restrictions associated with the EHTS are not rejected, even after a regime-shift occurring at the end of 2005, hence supporting an extended weak version of the "Liquidity Premium Theory". We also document relevant discrepancies in the short-run dynamics of long-term interest rates, which are strictly related to some structural differences between these Asian countries in terms of the "impossible trinity" between monetary independence, financial openness and exchange rate stability.