The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons underlying the variable and sometimes very large differentials between United States Treasury bill rates and private sector U.S. money market rates of comparable maturity

The relationship between time to maturity and yield on securities is of widespread interest to financial market participants and observers. The relationship, known as the term structure of interest rates, provides information about which maturities offer the highest expected returns to investors...

The Treasury bill rate is generally viewed as the representative money market rate. For this reason bill rates are almost always used in studies of the determinants of short-term interest rate levels and spreads, and bill rates are typically used as the index rate for variable-rate financial...