TIIE-28 Swaps as Risk-Adjusted Forecasts of Monetary Policy in Mexico

Abstract

Information extracted from financial derivatives on interest rates is commonly used to forecast movements in interest rates. However, such an extraction generally assumes that agents are risk-neutral, which is not necessarily the case. Accordingly, it might be useful to account for the agents’ risk-aversion when doing these forecasts, which one can implement by adding a risk-correction. In this context, we use TIIE-28 swaps to forecast changes in monetary policy in Mexico, using a set of financial variables to account for the risk-correction. We assess whether models with a risk-correction outperform the TIIE-28 swaps rates, and find that the in-sample explained variability improves when using a risk-correction. Centrally, we document that our main model’s out-of-sample forecasts are similar for short horizons (3-month), and statistically significantly better for longer horizons (9 to 24-month), compared to the direct use of TIIE-28 swaps interest rates.