Time-Varying Risk Premia in the Single European Treasury Bill Market

This paper investigates the validity of the expectations hypothesis (EH) with time-varying, albeit stationary, term premia in the Ecu Treasury bill market. The analysis utilises the term premium factor representation proposed by Tzavalis and Wickens (1997) and the modified VAR approach by Cuthbertson et al. (1997). The findings indicate that once time-varying term premia are accounted for, estimated models cannot reject the predictions of the EH. However, these term premia do not exhibit strong persistence. The rejection of the spread restriction for (n,m)=(26-week,13-week) may be due to a small I(1) term premium and/or a slight misalignment of investment horizons.Expectations hypothesis; Risk Premia; Perfect foresight regressions; VAR