Bonds, Currencies and Expectational Errors

Abstract

We propose a model in which sticky expectations concerning short-term interest rates generate joint predictability patterns in bond and currency markets. Our parsimonious specification can explain the downward sloping term structure of carry trade returns, difficult to replicate in a rational expectations framework. We offer empirical support for our approach and show that including a sticky short rate expectations channel into a standard affine term structure allows the model to better capture the drift patterns in the data.