Term Structure Estimation with Survey Data on Interest Rate Forecasts

The estimation of dynamic term structure models with flexible specification of market price of risk is beset by a severe small-sample problem arising from the highly persistent nature of interest rates. We propose to use survey data on the forecast of short-term interest rates as an additional input in the estimation to overcome the problem. The 3-factor pure-Gaussian model, thus estimated with the US Treasuries term structure for the 1990-2004 period, generates a stable estimate of expected path of the short-term interest rate, reproduces the well-known stylized patterns in the expectations hypothesis tests, and captures a large part of the short-run variations in the survey forecast of changes in longer-term interest rates