TY  - JOUR
AU  - Campbell,John Y.
AU  - Shiller,Robert J.
TI  - A Simple Account of the Behavior of Long-Term Interest Rates
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1203
PY  - 1983
Y2  - September 1983
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1203
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1203.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Y. Campbell
Morton L. and Carole S.
Olshan Professor of Economics
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center 213
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-6448
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: john_campbell@harvard.edu

Robert J. Shiller
Yale University, Cowles Foundation
Box 208281
30 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT  06520-8281
Tel: 203/432-3708
Fax: 203/432-6167
E-Mail: robert.shiller@yale.edu
AB  - Recent empirical research on the term structure of interest rates has shown that the long-term interest rate is well described by adistributed lag on short-term interest rates, but does not conform to the expectations theory of the term structure. It has been suggested that the long rate "overreacts" to the short rate. This paper presents aunified taxonomy of risk premia, or deviations from the expectations theory. This enables the hypothesis of overreaction to be formally stated. It is shown that, if anything, the long rate has underreacted to the short rate. However, the independent movement of the long rate is primarily responsible for the failure of the expectations theory.
ER  -