The behavior of short-term interest rates: International evidence of non-linear adjustment

This study tests whether changes in the short-term interest rate can best be modelled in a non-linear fashion. We argue that there are good theoretical and empirical reasons for adopting this strategy. Using monthly data from several industrialized countries, namely Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and US, we show that the short-term interest rate movements are better explained, usually via the exponential smooth transition autoregression ( ESTR). Unlike the existing literature on non-linear estimation, we consider a number of candidates for the transition variable. These include: an error correction term, estimated from an underlying cointegrating relationship predicted by the expectations hypothesis, the US term spread, the domestic spread, inflation and output growth forecasts, and deviations from an inflation target in the case of Canada, the UK and Sweden.