Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2014172

K.7

Number 1041

January 2012

Foreign Holdings of U.S. Treasuries and

U.S. Treasury Yields

Daniel O. Beltran, Maxwell Kretchmer, Jaime Marquez, and Charles P. Thomas

International Finance Discussion Papers

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2014172

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 

International Finance Discussion Papers 

Number 1041 

January 2012 

Foreign Holdings of U.S. Treasuries and U.S. Treasury Yields 

Daniel O. Beltran 

Maxwell Kretchmer 

Jaime Marquez 

Charles P. Thomas 

NOTE: International Finance Discussion Papers are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate 

discussion and critical comment. References to International Finance Discussion Papers (other than an 

acknowledgment that the writer has had access to unpublished material) should be cleared with the 

author or authors. Recent IFDPs are available on the Web at www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/. This 

paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network electronic library 

at www.ssrn.com. 

Foreign Holdings of U.S. Treasuries

and U.S. Treasury Yields

Daniel O. Beltran, Maxwell Kretchmer, Jaime Marquez, Charles P. Thomas∗

Abstract

Foreign official holdings of U.S. Treasuries increased from $400 billion in January

1994 to about $3 trillion in June 2010. Most of this growth is accounted for by a handful

of emerging market economies that have been running large current account surpluses.

These countries are channeling their savings through the official sector, which is then

acquiring foreign exchange reserves. Any shift in policy to reduce their current account

surpluses or dampen the rate of reserves accumulation would likely slow the pace of

foreign official purchases of U.S. Treasuries. Would such a slowing of foreign official

purchases of Treasury notes and bonds affect long-term Treasury yields? Most likely

yes, and the effects appear to be large. By our estimates, if foreign official inflows into

U.S. Treasuries were to decrease in a given month by $100 billion, 5-year Treasury rates

would rise by about 40-60 basis points in the short run. But once we allow foreign private

investors to react to the yield change induced by the shock to foreign official inflows, the

long-run effect is about 20 basis points.

Key words: Foreign official inflows, Treasury yields, reserves, capital flows

JEL codes: F31, F32, F34

∗The views in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and should not be interpreted as

reflecting the views of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or of any other person associated

with the Federal Reserve System. We thank Neil Ericsson, Michiel Depooter, Jeniffer Roush, Jonathan Wright,

Andrew Ang, Monika Piazzesi, Linda Goldberg, Richard Portes, Stephanie Curcuru, Alain Chaboud, Carol

Bertaut and Steve Kamin for helpful comments. We thank Garima Vasishtha and Michael Bauer for discussing

our paper at the 2010 Canadian Economics Association conference and the Day-Ahead Conference organized

by the Chicago Fed, respectively, and seminar participants at Georgetown University. Many thanks to Stefania

D’Amico, Lutz Kilian, and Robin Greenwood for sharing their data with us, to Glenn Rudebusch, Eric Swanson,

and Frank Warnock for their comments on our replication of their results.

1

1 Introduction

As economies are becoming increasingly financially integrated, longer-term bond yields are

increasingly determined in international markets. This calls into question the ability of

central banks to influence longer-term interest rates by the setting of short-term rates. For

example, Greenspan (2005) was concerned about the failure of the longer-term interest rates

to rise after the Fed began tightening monetary policy starting in mid-2004 (figure 1). During

this period, foreign purchases of Treasury notes and bonds were particularly strong (figure 2),

and some studies (Warnock and Warnock (2009) and Bernanke, Reinhart, and Sack (2004))

found evidence that these purchases contributed to lower bond yields. Such a decoupling

of long-term interest rates from the short-term interest rate, which is set by the monetary

authority, has important implications for the effectiveness of monetary policy. In addition,

unexpected shifts in foreign demand for U.S. Treasuries could cloud the signals extracted from

movements in long-term interest rates.

Bernanke (2005) has attributed some of the decline in long-term interest rates in the

United States and other advanced economies since 2000 to a “global savings glut.” Indeed,

global foreign exchange reserves have risen sharply since 2000 (figure 3). A significant share

of global foreign exchange reserves are invested in U.S. Treasury securities– the share was 36

percent as of June 2010. As shown by the red area in figure 4, foreign official holdings of U.S.

Treasuries increased from $400 billion in January 1994 to about $3 trillion in June 2010. Most

of this growth is accounted for by a handful of emerging market economies that have been

running large current account surpluses. Figure 5 plots the geography of total foreign holdings

of U.S. Treasury securities over time. As shown by the combined pink areas, China, Japan,

and the other emerging market countries experienced the fastest growth. These countries are

channeling their savings through the official sector, which is then acquiring foreign exchange

reserves. Any shift in policy to reduce their current account surpluses or dampen the rate of

reserves accumulation would likely slow the pace of foreign official purchases of U.S. Treasuries.

Would such a slowing of foreign official purchases of Treasury securities affect their yields?

As acknowledged by Wu (2005), answering this question is difficult for many reasons, most of

which have not been adequately addressed in the literature. First, the direction of causation

between foreign demand for Treasury securities and their prices (or yields) is likely to go both

ways. Second, long-term interest rates are influenced by forward looking variables which are

typically unobservable, such as expectations of long-run inflation and other macroeconomic

variables, which makes identifying the effects of foreign official inflows more difficult. Third,

changes in asset prices induced by shifts in foreign official demand may be, in time, partially

offset by the actions of private investors. So not taking these actions into account may bias the

2
estimated effect of foreign official purchases. Finally, data on interest rates, macroeconomic

variables, and foreign holdings are often highly autocorrelated or even non-stationary, so the

potential for “discovering” spurious relationships is great when fitting the levels of the economic

time series (Granger and Newbold (1974)). The goal of this paper is to uncover the relationship

between foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury securities and their yields while avoiding these

traps. This task requires a more sophisticated modeling approach than the single-equation

methodology popular in the literature.

The first of these traps is neglecting the interdependency between Treasury prices and

foreign demand. Nearly all previous studies assume that foreign governments do not optimize

their foreign reserves portfolio, thus treating foreign official inflows as exogenous.1 However,

surveys of central banks suggest that most reserve managers in fact do change their reserve

portfolios in response to changes in Treasury prices and other macroeconomic variables. For

example, a recent survey by the BIS found that reserve managers are increasingly behaving

like private asset managers, emphasizing returns relative to liquidity and capital preservation

(Borio, Galati, and Heath (2008)).2 The BIS survey indicated that over two-thirds of central

banks employ external managers, that almost all central banks use value-at-risk methodologies to measure market risk. Papaioannou, Portes, and Siourounis (2006) and others have

found evidence suggesting that central banks pursue a mean-variance portfolio diversification

strategy. Indeed, as shown below, our statistical tests strongly reject the null hypothesis that

foreign official inflows into U.S. Treasuries are exogenous to changes in Treasury prices. Foreign

private flows are also likely to be endogenous, but we did not find strong and valid instruments

for them.

To address the second concern– that long-term interest rates are influenced by forward

looking expectations which are typically unobservable– we use two measures of risk premia:

the term-premium derived from the three-factor affine term-structure model of D’Amico, Kim,

and Wei (2010), and realized excess holding period returns. By construction, both of these

measures of risk premia are undistorted by the effects of expected changes in the Fed’s monetary policy stance.

To avoid the potential for discovering spurious relationships from regressions on highly

correlated or non-stationary data, we difference the data to obtain flow measures for our

variables. By using data expressed in first differences, we are estimating the short run elasticity

between foreign official flows and changes in yields. Previous studies use cumulated 12-month

flows (Warnock and Warnock (2009)) and the level of foreign holdings (Bertaut, DeMarco,

Kamin, and Tryon (2011)) to estimate the long-run effect on yields. However, the variables

1One exception is Sierra (2010).

2An older survey by Pringle and Carver (2002) also suggests increased emphasis on returns or yield.

3
used in these studies are either highly autocorrelated, non-stationary, or trend-stationary.3

Thus, when estimating the long-run effect, we use a cointegrated vector auto-regression (VAR)

model which is suitable for regressing non-stationary variables.

Controlling for the actions of foreign private investors to any misalignments in Treasury

yields induced by changes in foreign official demand requires a more sophisticated model. Foreign private investors may trade both short- and long-term securities for hedging or speculative

purposes, and may also view U.S. sovereign bonds and say, German sovereign bonds as close

substitutes. Our VAR model captures the interactions between foreign official and foreign

private flows into long-term Treasuries.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In the next section we describe the

data used to estimate our models. In section 3 we examine the effects of foreign inflows into

U.S. Treasuries on the term premium, using OLS, two-stage least squares, and cointegrated

VAR models. The following section conducts a similar analysis on realized excess returns.

In section 5 we place our results in the context of the existing literature. The last section

concludes.

2 Data

2.1 Interest rates and risk premia

Following Dai and Singleton (2002), we define the term premium for an n−period bond as

T P n

t ≡ R

n

t −

1

n

Xn−1

i=0

Et(rt+i)

| {z }

EH component

(1)

where Rn

t

is the yield of an n-period zero-coupon bond at time t, and rt ≡ R1

t

is the short rate.

Equation 1 can be used to decompose the long-term rate into the “expectations hypothesis”

(EH) component, which measures the expected path of the short rate, and the term-premium

component, which measures inflation risk, liquidity risk, and other risk factors that affect the

long-rate. Thus, in principle, the term premium is undistorted by the expected changes in

Fed’s monetary policy stance.

We focus on the 5-year term-premium for U.S. Treasury securities because this maturity

is close to the average maturity of U.S. Treasury and agency securities held by foreigners,

3We arrived at this conclusion by examining the augmented Dickey-Fuller statistic and autocorrelation

function of the variables used in their regressions.

4
and because prices of 5-year Treasury notes are readily observed.4 The expected path of the

short rate in equation 1 is not observable, which makes the term premium unobservable as

well. Both are derived from the arbitrage-free 3-factor term-structure model of D’Amico, Kim,

and Wei (2010) which builds upon the model of Kim and Wright (2005). The model uses a

continuous-time nominal stochastic discount factor to derive the price of an n-period nominal

zero-coupon bond. Arbitrage-free pricing implies that once risk is factored into account, there

are no arbitrage opportunities from buying one security and shorting some combination of

other securities. Three underlying latent factors are used to describe the behavior of the yield

curve through time. Although these factors have no macroeconomic interpretation, they are

often related to the level, slope, and curvature of the yield curve.5

The term-premium described above is a model-dependent and ex-ante measure of risk

premium. But we also consider an ex-post measure of risk premia that is not model dependent:

realized excess returns. More specifically, we use the holding period return from buying a 6-

year bond at time t and selling it as a 5-year bond 1 year later, minus the return of a 1-year

bond:

D

6

t+1 = ln

P

5

t+1

P

6

t

− rt. (2)

We compute D6

t+1 using the fitted zero-coupon yield curve estimates of Gurkaynak, Sack, and

Wright (2007).

Figure 6 illustrates the timing of bond-purchases that give rise to the excess returns realized

one-year ahead. At time t, the investor borrows funds for 1-year at a fixed rate rt to purchase

a 6-year Treasury bond. The investor holds the bond for 1 year (the holding period), during

which its price will fluctuate because of changing macroeconomic fundamentals and possibly

(as we will test) changes in foreign demand for Treasury securities. Excess returns are realized

at time t + 1 when the 6-year bond is sold as a 5-year bond, and the 1-year loan is paid off.

Our two measures of risk premium are conceptually related to each other– the term premium is equal to the average of future realized excess returns for bonds of decreasing maturity.6

Figure 7 compares our ex-ante measure of risk premium (the 5-year term-premium) to our expost measure of risk premium (excess holding period return of a 6-year bond realized 1-year

in the future). Although realized excess returns are more volatile then the term premium, the

4Roughly half of the Treasury and agency securities held by foreign official investors mature in 5 years or

less (Department of the Treasury (2011)).

5The D’Amico, Kim, and Wei (2010) model is estimated by applying the Kalman filter to the following

data: zero coupon yields taken from the Svensson curve (Svensson (1994)) that is fitted to off-the-run Treasury

coupon securities, 3-month and 6-month Treasury bill yields, CPI inflation, TIPS yields, the 6-month and 12-

month ahead forecasts of the 3-month T-bill yield from Blue Chip Financial Forecasts, and the Blue Chip

forecast of the 3-month T-bill yield over the next 5 to 10 years.

6

It can be shown that for an n-year bond, T P n

t =

1

n

nP−1

i=1

Et(D

n−i+1

t+i

).

5
two measures are positively correlated (the Pearson’s product-moment correlation is 0.45 with

a t-statistic of 6.36).

Because foreign official flows occur during the holding period, they can only influence the

price of the 5-year bond (originally purchased as a 6-year bond) when it is sold at the end

of the holding period, P

5

t+1. Thus our a-priori hypothesis is that unanticipated foreign bond

purchases occurring during the holding period would exert upward pressure on P

5

t+1, thus

increasing excess returns realized at time t + 1.

2.2 Foreign holdings of Treasury securities

We use monthly data from the Treasury International Capital (TIC) reporting system, which

is the most complete source for data on foreign official and foreign private net purchases of

U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, (gross purchases by foreign residents minus gross sales by

foreign residents).7

A well known problem with the monthly TIC transactions data is that they undercount

foreign official acquisitions of U.S. securities because they do not capture acquisitions through

foreign intermediaries (Bertaut, Griever, and Tryon (2006)).8 To estimate the “missing flows,”

we make use of the detailed and more accurate annual reports on foreign holdings of U.S.

securities (as in Bertaut and Tryon (2007) and Warnock and Warnock (2009)), as well as data

on custodial holdings at FRBNY.9 Further, the adjusted flows are “survey consistent”because

they insure that the change in measured holdings between two annual surveys equals the sum

of cumulated flows during the period and the estimated valuation change; this approach for

estimating flows improves upon the approach of Warnock and Warnock (2009) and Bertaut

and Tryon (2007) because we perform an additional adjustment based on changes in custody

holdings at FRBNY.10

As noted earlier, foreign official investors have been acquiring Treasuries at a much faster

pace than foreign private investors. The share of all Treasuries held by official investors has

climbed from 15 percent in 1994 to 46 percent in 2007 (figure 8). Foreign investors have also

7The data come from the annual and monthly survey forms, and can be found on the Treasury Department’s

website at www.treasury.gov/tic.

8For example, an acquisition of a U.S. security by a foreign official institution from a private foreign entity on

a foreign securities exchange will not be recorded in the TIC because it is not a U.S. cross-border transaction.

Note, however, that the initial acquisition of the U.S. security by the foreign private investor should have been

recorded in the TIC.

9We use confidential data on amounts held in custody accounts for individual countries at FRBNY to

perform these adjustments.

10Rudebusch et al. use publicly available data on aggregate custody holdings at the Federal Reserve Bank of

New York’s (FRBNY) obtained from the H.4.1 statistical release. However, changes in these holdings account

for just a fraction (about 60 percent) of overall foreign official flows.

6
shown an increasing preference for longer-maturity Treasuries. As shown by the black line in

figure 9, the share of long-term Treasuries (notes and bonds) held by foreigners has steadily

climbed from 30 percent in 1994 to 75 percent in 2007. Meanwhile, the share of short-term

Treasuries (bills) held by foreigners, the dashed green line, remained in the 30 to 40 percent

range. In this paper we focus our attention on the effects of foreign purchases of long-term

Treasuries. Figure 10 shows that the share of long-term Treasuries held by foreign officials

steadily increased from 10 to 50 percent between 1994 and 2007, while the private share trailed

the official share until 1998 and then flattened out at around 20 percent.

Our sample comprises monthly data from January 1994 to June 2007. The beginning date

is restricted by the availability of data for our explanatory variables (discussed later), and

the end period is chosen to intentionally exclude the financial crisis period. During the 2007-

2011 period, financial markets (and Treasury yields) were very volatile. During this turbulent

period, events such as the Lehman bankruptcy and subsequent implosion of repo markets, the

near-collapse of AIG and the government agencies Freddie and Fannie, the implementation of

the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the commencement of large scale asset purchases by the

Fed, and the various episodes of the European sovereign debt crisis would likely obscure the

relationships we care about.

2.3 Other control variables

To control for other factors which might affect the term premium, our regressions include the

following explanatory variables: (1) Implied volatility of options on U.S. and German five-year

sovereign note futures; (2) Liquidity premium (LP) measured as the difference between the

synthetic off-the-run and on-the-run five-year Treasury note yields; (3) VIX index of stock

market volatility which is correlated with flight-to-safety flows and dollar appreciations; (4)

Year-over-year change in industrial production (∆IP); (5) VAR estimates of exogenous oilspecific demand shocks using the data from Kilian (2009); (6) U.S. federal government budget

balance; (7) Cochrane and Piazessi factors (CP1−5

t and CP6−9t

), linear combinations of forward

rates that have been shown to forecast future realized excess returns quite well (Cochrane and

Piazzesi (2005)), and (8) a measure of global risk appetite developed by Credit Suisse which

captures the relative performance of safe assets like government bonds versus volatile assets

like equities and emerging country bonds.11

11Sixty-four global assets are used in Credit Suisse’s global risk appetite calculation.

7
3 Foreign inflows into Treasuries and the term premium

Our a-priori hypothesis is that increases in foreign official and private holdings of U.S. Treasuries exert upward pressure on bond prices, thus lowering yields and the term premium

(assuming the expected path of the short-rate remains unchanged). To examine the shortrun dynamics between foreign inflows into long-term Treasuries and the 5-year term premium

we estimate a model using monthly flow data. We then examine the long-run relationships

between foreign inflows and the term premium by estimating a cointegrated VAR model.

3.1 Instrumental variables approach

The instrumental variables model is specified as

T P60

t − T P60t−1 = ∆T P60t = α + γt + Xtβ1 + Ztβ2 + ut

, ut ∼ N(0, σ2) (3)

where Xtis the vector of regressors assumed to be exogenous and Ztis the vector of regressors

assumed to be endogenous. The explanatory exogenous variables are those described in section

2.3, expressed as changes. The endogenous regressor is the monthly foreign official flow into

U.S. Treasury notes and bonds as a share of marketable Treasury notes and bonds outstanding. Because we did not find strong and valid instruments for foreign private flows, we treat

this variable as exogenous. When we tried estimating the model treating both private and

official flows as endogenous, the estimated coefficient on foreign official flows was practically

unchanged, but using weak instruments made the estimated coefficient on foreign private flows

extremely sensitive to slight changes in the specification.

We experiment with several instrumental variables that are related to foreign exchange

reserve accumulation (which are heavily invested in U.S. Treasuries) but not directly related

to risk premia. The instruments are listed below:

• Foreign exchange interventions by Japan’s Ministry of Finance (JP Y F XINTt ) because

a sizable portion of the proceeds from these interventions were invested in U.S. Treasuries;12 We interpret these interventions as an exogenous shock to foreign official inflows

into U.S. Treasuries. However, as recognized by Bernanke, Reinhart, and Sack (2004),

the potential for joint endogeneity can occur if, for example, weak economic data simultaneously lowers Treasury yields and depreciates the dollar, prompting the Japanese

finance ministry to intervene to prevent the yen’s appreciation.

12These interventions totalled $547 billion between April 1993 and March 2004, and were particularly strong

in 2003 as the Ministry of Finance attempted to slow the yen’s appreciation.

8
• Exogenous oil-specific supply shocks from a VAR, obtained from Kilian (2009).

• Sum of Chinese trade and direct investment inflows (BOP CNt). We expect that strong

trade surpluses or direct investment inflows into China would place pressure on the

People’s Bank of China to intervene to prevent the renmimbi from appreciating. In

turn, these interventions would likely be correlated with larger Chinese foreign official

flows into the United States.

The strength of these instruments will be accessed by examining the Cragg-Donald Wald

F-statistic. When two or more instruments are used, we judge their validity by the Hansen

J-statistic (under the null that the instruments are uncorrelated with the error terms).

Table 1 shows OLS and two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimates; the latter approach

treats foreign flows as endogenous. Counter to what we would expect, the coefficient on foreign

official and foreign private flows are positive in the OLS specification (column 1), but small. In

columns 2 and 3, we use two-stage least squares (2SLS) and scale foreign flows by marketable

Treasury securities outstanding. Column 2 shows the first stage results for the regression on

foreign official inflows. Japanese interventions and the exogenous oil supply shocks are both

associated with stronger official inflows. Increases in the VIX index have a negative effect on

foreign official inflows, perhaps because the VIX is an indicator of flight-to-safety behavior by

private investors. When the VIX is high, investors are nervous and flee to the relative safety

of U.S. Treasuries– the dollar appreciates and the pressure for emerging market countries

to intervene to combat the appreciation of their currencies is reduced. Column 3 shows the

second stage results, the coefficient on foreign official flows suggests that an inflow equal to one

percent of the amount of Treasuries outstanding lowers the 5-year term premium by 13.5 basis

points. In June 2007, the amount of marketable long-term Treasuries outstanding held by the

public (excluding holdings of the Federal Reserve System) was $2,915 billion. Therefore, our

coefficient implies that an inflow of $100 billion into U.S. Treasury notes and bonds would lower

the 5-year term premium (and hence the 5-year yield) by 46 basis points (100/29.15*(-13.5)).

In columns 4 and 5, we do the same 2SLS estimation but instead of scaling foreign flows

by the amount of Treasuries outstanding, we scale them by U.S. nominal GDP. Because GDP

is larger than the amount of Treasuries outstanding, the coefficient becomes larger. U.S. GDP

was roughly $14 trillion in June 2007, so the coefficient of -0.696 implies that an inflow of

$100 billion into Treasury notes and bonds would lower the 5-year term premium by -50 basis

points (100/140*(-69.6)).

The Cragg-Donald Wald F-statistic in specification 3 of 15.7 is a bit below the critical

value 19.9 of the Stock and Yogo (2005) size test with size r = 0.10, so our instruments are

not that strong. However, in specification 5 we may have a weak instruments problem because

9
the Cragg-Donald Wald F-statistic of 9.9 does not pass the 10 percent size test (it does pass

the 20% size test). For both IV specifications, the instruments appear to be valid according

to the Hansen J statistic; we fail to reject the null that the instruments are uncorrelated with

the error terms. For both IV regressions, the Hausmann-Wu endogeneity test rejects the null

hypothesis that foreign official flows are exogenous at the 5 percent level of significance. And

in both cases, the Pagan-Hall tests fail to reject the null that the residuals are homoscedastic.

However, we find some evidence that the residuals may be autocorrelated, as the CumbyHuizinga tests reject the null that the errors are non-autocorrelated at the 5 percent level.

This is somewhat surprising because the variables are already expressed in first differences.

Even so, to address the potential problem of autocorrelated residuals, we report Newey-West

heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent (HAC) standard errors.

In columns 1 and 2 of table 2, we try different combinations of included instruments. In

specification 1, the instruments appear to be fairly strong and uncorrelated with the error

terms, whereas they are weaker in specification 2. But in both cases the second stage coefficients on foreign official flows are similar in magnitude to the one reported in column 3 of

table 1. In the third specification, we use foreign official inflows from Japan and instrument

them with Japanese foreign exchange interventions.13 The Cragg-Donald Wald F-statistic of

98 indicates that the instrument is strong, and the coefficient on Japanese official inflows is

similar to those found in specifications 1 and 2. In specifications 4 and 5 we examine the

effects of official purchases from China and the Mid-East oil exporters, but the instruments

are clearly weak in both cases, making these estimates unreliable.14

Referring back to figure 2, the widening gap between the blue and red lines between 2004

and 2007 indicate that foreign official investors began diversifying their portfolio of U.S. securities by acquiring increasing amounts of agency securities. To the extent that Treasury

and agency securities are close substitutes (at least during our sample period) and foreigners

purchased large quantities of both, we consider a broader measure comprising both types of

foreign inflows. Using this broader measure of foreign official inflows (scaled by GDP), we run

several instrumental variable regressions and present the results in table 3. The instruments

appear to be weak as none of the specifications pass the Stock and Yogo (2005) weak instruments test using a 10 percent size. The estimated coefficients from these regressions imply

that a $100 billion foreign official inflow into Treasuries and agencies would lower the 5-year

term premium by 43 to 70 basis points.

Summarizing the results from the term-premium regressions using instrumental variables,

13The regressions in specifications 3-5, done as a robustness check, use confidential data on foreign official

inflows from individual countries, which are not publicly available.

14The weak results for the China regression could be because, as shown in figure 5, total Chinese holdings

of U.S. Treasuries began increasing rapidly only toward the end of our sample period, which ends in 2007.

10
when the instruments are strong, valid, and the residuals pass the usual tests, the point

estimates of the effect of a $100 billion foreign official inflow into U.S. Treasury notes and bonds

on the 5-year term-premium range from -46 basis points to -50 basis points. Furthermore,

conditional on having valid and strong instruments, the Hausman and Wu endogeneity tests

strongly reject the null hypothesis that foreign official inflows are exogenous, justifying the

need to use two-stage least squares.

3.2 Cointegrated VAR Approach

We now apply Johansen’s cointegration method to both recognize the endogeneity of the term

premium and foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and to characterize the long-run

and short-run dynamics between changes in the term premium and foreign holdings of U.S.

Treasury securities. The system of equations is as follows:

∆Xt =

Xn

k=1

Γk

3×3

· ∆Xt−k + Ψ

3×5

·





1

yt

vol.ust

vol.gert

vixt





| {z }

+

short−run

Π

3×3

· Xt−1

| {z }

long−run

+ vt

3×1

, where (4)

vt ∼ IN(0, Ω

3×3

), and ∆Xt ≡





∆T Pt

∆F OIt

∆F P V Tt



 .

In equation 4, n is the number of lags, Ψ and Γk are matrices of parameters characterizing

short-run responses, and Π is a matrix of parameters of long-run responses. Foreign official

(F OIt) and foreign private (F P V Tt) are scaled by the amount of marketable Treasury notes

and bonds outstanding (excluding holdings of the Federal Reserve system).

Central to the Johansen method is the estimation of the number of long-run relations,

which is given by the rank of Π. To this end, one needs to specify n and we consider several

values: 1, 2 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. For each value of n, we apply FIML to equation (4), and

test whether the distribution of vtis consistent with the maintained hypotheses. If there is

support for these hypotheses, we then test the rank of Π using the Trace and Max tests, both

with and without correction for degrees of freedom.

Table 4 shows the results along with statistical criteria (AIC, SC, and HQ) for choosing n.

For n < 2, the residuals appear to be either autocorrelated, heteroscedastic, or not normally

11
distributed. The SC and HQ criteria would select the models with 1 and 2 lags, respectively,

which do not have well-behaved residuals. The AIC criteria favors the model with 4 lags,

whose residuals are more like white noise. For n > 2, the rank of Π is at most one regardless

of the test used, suggesting that the there is only one long-run relation. Given this result,

Π can be expressed as Π = α · β, where α

0=



α1 α2 α3



and β =



β1 β2 β3



; the

α

0

s represent the speed of adjustment to departures from the long-run relation and the β

0

s

represent the importance of each factor in determining the long-run. We identify the long-run

relation by normalizing β1 = 1.

The long-run coefficients under this normalization are presented in table 5. The parameter

estimates are fairly insensitive to the lag choice. The β coefficients on foreign official holdings in

the term-premium equation range from 0.046 to 0.062, and they are all statistically significant.

The coefficients on foreign private holdings are similar in magnitude, but only statistically

significant for the specifications with 8 or more lags. The long run relation is given by

T Pd60

t = −0.046 · F OIt − 0.061 · F P V Tt

. (5)

These estimates imply that a one percent increase in either foreign official or foreign private

holdings of U.S. Treasuries (as a share of Treasuries outstanding) lowers the term premium

by 5 to 6 basis points (or between 17 and 20 basis points per $100 billion inflow). They also

suggest that a decline in foreign officials holdings that is offset by an increase in foreign private

holdings would leave the term premium roughly unchanged. All told, when we allow foreign

private investors to react endogenously to the yield changes induced by an exogenous shock to

foreign official holdings, the effects of foreign official flows on the term premium are dampened.

Note that all three variables are endogenous but F P V T \t does not respond directly to

deviations in the long relation because the estimate of α3 is not different from zero. The longrun relation suggests that an increase in foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities lowers the

term premium, regardless of whether the increase is undertaken by foreign official holders or

by foreign private investors.

4 Foreign Holdings and Realized Excess Returns

So far the analysis has focussed on the effects of foreign official inflows on the term premium,

which is an ex-ante and model dependent measure of the risk premium. In this section, we

examine the effects of foreign inflows on (ex-post) realized excess returns, which is not model

dependent. We estimate 2SLS regressions using the same instrumental variables as in the termpremium regressions. All flow variables are expressed as sums during the 1-year holding period

12
ending at time t. So in contrast to the short-run estimates derived earlier from regressions

using monthly flow data, the effect we are estimating here is a medium term elasticity. Our

a-priori hypothesis is that foreign official inflows during the holding period would increase

excess returns by raising the price (or lowering the yield) of the 6-year bond when it is sold as

a 5-year bond at the end of the holding period.

The first column of table 6 shows the OLS estimates for the variables measured in levels.

The coefficients on foreign official and foreign private flows are positive but not statistically

significant. In the column 2, we perform 2-stage least squares using Japanese foreign exchange

interventions to instrument for foreign official flows. The second stage coefficient on foreign

official inflows is 0.582, and it is significant at the 5 percent level. The coefficient on foreign

private inflows is similar in magnitude, and also statistically significant. In order to convert the

coefficient estimate of 0.595 into an equivalent effect on the 5-year yield, we let Dn

t+1 = 0.595 in

equation 2, and solve for the price of the 5-year bond at the end of the holding period (P

n−1

t+1 )

while holding the price of the 6-year bond at the beginning of the holding period (P

n

t

) and the

one-year rate constant. Doing so, we obtain that a 1 percentage point increase in foreign official

flows into U.S. Treasuries notes and bonds over a one-year period (as a share of outstanding

notes and bonds) lowers the yield on the 5-year bond at the end of that year by 12 basis

points. Thus, if foreign official inflows into Treasury notes and bonds had been $100 billion

higher than they were in the one-year period ending in June 2007, the 5-year Treasury yield

would have been 42 basis points lower. The p-value associated with the Cumby-Huizinga test

statistic suggests that the residuals are autocorrelated, which is why we report Newey-West

HAC standard errors. To address the autocorrelation problem explicitly, we try estimating the

short-run effect by re-estimating the regression using first differences of the variables (columns

4 and 5). The coefficient on foreign official inflows is still positive and of similar magnitude to

the one in column 3, but is no longer statistically significant. This suggests that the short-run

and medium-run elasticities may be similar to each other.

As a robustness check, we estimate the excess returns regression using different combinations of instruments. The results are shown in table 7. The instruments pass the weak

instruments test in specifications 1 and 2 only. The coefficients on foreign official inflows in

these specifications imply that a $100 billion increase in foreign official inflows into Treasury

notes and bonds during the one-year period ending in June 2007 would have lowered the 5-year

Treasury yield by 39 to 62 basis points.

13
5 Comparison with other studies

Table 8 compares the effects implied by our estimates to those obtained in other studies.

The metric used is basis points per $100 billion in purchases. The top portion of the table

compares estimates of the short-run effects, derived from regressions using weekly or monthly

data on foreign official flows, or from event studies of interventions by the Japanese ministry

of Finance, and the Fed’s purchases of Treasuries through the Large-Scale Asset Purchase

(LSAP) program. Our short-run elasticity estimates of roughly -50 basis points are roughly

in line with those of the other studies. In some cases, the similarity in the estimates may

be pure coincidence. For example, McCauley and Jiang (2004) regress 5-year and 10-year

Treasury yields on weekly changes in foreign official holdings held in custody at the New York

Fed. They acknowledge that their results are “not very robust” to changes in methodology

because “widening the regression window to 52 weeks results in less reliable estimates.” More

importantly, McCauley and Jiang (2004) find a stronger relationship between the previous

week’s change in yields and the current week’s change in custody holdings, suggesting that the

direction of causation may well go from yields to flows. In contrast, Bernanke, Reinhart, and

Sack (2004) and D’Amico, Kim, and Wei (2010) implicitly control for the joint endogeneity of

yields and flows because they estimate the effects of interventions on yields during a narrow

time window surrounding the interventions.

The estimates of the medium-term effects of foreign official flows on yields are derived

from regressions using rolling sums of 12-month flows. In the previous section, using excess

returns regressions we estimate that $100 billion in foreign official inflows during a 12-month

period lower the 5-year yield by about 40 to 60 basis points. These estimates are similar to

our short run elasticities. Warnock and Warnock (2009) find a similarly large effect, whereas

Rudebusch, Swanson, and Wu (2006) find no significant effect. However, as documented by

Beltran, Kretchmer, Marquez, and Thomas (2010), the results in these studies are not robust

to minor changes in specification.

The long-run elasticities shown in the bottom portion of table 8 are derived from regressions

using holdings by foreign official investors, or cumulated purchases by the Fed through the

LSAPs. Our estimates from the cointegration analysis are a bit higher than those of Bertaut,

DeMarco, Kamin, and Tryon (2011) which regress nominal Treasury yields on the level of

foreign holdings. A possible explanation for this difference is that Bertaut, DeMarco, Kamin,

and Tryon (2011) treat the level of foreign official holdings as exogenous, whereas we allow it

to respond to yields and other factors.

Our long-run estimates are also higher than those of the studies examining the efficacy

of the LSAPs (Gagnon, Raskin, Remache, and Sack (2011), D’Amico and King (2011), and

14
Hamilton and Wu (2011)).15 There are several reasons for why the Fed LSAP purchases could,

at least in theory, have a smaller impact on interest rates than foreign official purchases. First,

the Fed’s LSAP program was designed as a temporary stimulus program, and announced as

such. In contrast, because foreign exchange reserves have steadily grown over the last couple of

decades, purchases of U.S. Treasuries by foreign official investors are more likely to be perceived

as permanent. Also, surveys of inflation forecasts show an increase in the dispersion of the

forecast means around the time the LSAPs came into effect (figure 11), suggesting an increase

in inflation uncertainty. If the LSAPs increased the amount of uncertainty surrounding the

level of future inflation, the inflation risk premium would have risen, exerting upward pressure

on long-term interest rates.16 In contrast, foreign official purchases of Treasuries are not likely

to influence the inflation risk premium. Finally, there are some difficulties with gauging the

effects of the the LSAPs using event studies that try to measure the reaction of yields within

specific LSAP announcement windows (e.g. Gagnon, Raskin, Remache, and Sack (2011)). If

investors had already formed expectations of purchases prior to the announcement window,

the response of yields may have occurred prior to the announcement window, and thus would

not be captured in the announcement effect. Conversely, a portion of the LSAP effect may only

be priced when the purchases actually occur (after the announcement window), as evidenced

by the “flow effect” analysis of D’Amico and King (2011). In sum, these conceptual and

methodological issues could explain why our estimates are higher than those of the LSAP

event studies.

6 Conclusions

Previous studies that have tried to estimate the effect of foreign official inflows on U.S. longterm interest rates have failed to take into account the endogeneity of these inflows. We find

strong evidence that foreign official inflows into the United States respond to such things as

implied volatility of U.S. and German sovereign bonds, liquidity premium between on-the-run

and off-the-run Treasury notes, the U.S. federal government’s structural budget balance, and

the implied volatility of the S&P500 stock market index, which serves as a proxy for investor

risk aversion. When we treat foreign official inflows as an endogenous regressor, the estimated

effect of these inflows on yields becomes stronger (more negative). One reason for this is that

periods of high investor risk aversion are usually associated with strong private inflows into U.S.

Treasuries, lower Treasury yields, and a stronger dollar. In turn, a stronger dollar alleviates

15For a more comprehensive list of LSAP studies, see Williams (2011).

16Gagnon, Raskin, Remache, and Sack (2011) use a survey-based measure of inflation forecast dispersion to

try to control for this in their term-premium regressions.

15
the pressure on emerging economies to intervene to prevent their currencies from appreciating,

reducing foreign official inflows. In sum, sharp increases in investor risk aversion usually result

in slower official inflows together with falling yields. Therefore, a model that treats foreign

official inflows as exogenous will associate lower yields with slower official inflows in periods of

high investor risk aversion, dampening the estimated overall effect of official inflows on yields.

We find that a $100 billion increase in foreign official inflows into U.S. Treasury notes and

bonds lowers the 5-year yield by roughly 40 to 60 basis points in the short run. However, our

VAR analysis shows that in the long-run, when we allow foreign private investors to react to

the effects induced by a shock to foreign official holdings, the estimated effect is roughly -20

basis points per $100 billion. Putting these results into context, between 1995 and 2010 China

acquired roughly $1.1 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds. A literal interpretation of our

long-run estimates suggests that if China had not accumulated any foreign exchange reserves

during this period, and therefore not acquired these $1.1 trillion in Treasuries, all else equal,

the 5-year Treasury yield would have been roughly 2 percentage points higher by 2010. This

effect is large enough to have implications for the effectiveness of monetary policy.

Our estimates can be used to gauge the overall effect of the global savings glut on U.S.

yields through high foreign savings that are invested in U.S. Treasury securities by the official

sector. In other words, if countries stop accumulating reserves and as a result no longer

invest in Treasuries, our estimates could be used to gauge the effect on Treasury yields. But

our results should not be used to gauge the effect on Treasury yields if a large holder of

U.S. Treasuries (such as China) were to shift its reserves away from U.S. Treasuries into say,

German Bunds. Such re-allocation of reserves would likely put downward pressure on Bunds

yields which, through private sector rebalancing, would in time put downward pressure on

Treasury yields as well. Estimating this diversification effect would likely involve estimating a

global portfolio balance model using time-series data on the composition of foreign exchange

reserves and global cross-border flows, which are not publicly available. Given that there is

ample evidence to suggest that reserves diversification is already taking place (see figure 12,

for example), this is an important question for future research.17

17More recently, reserve holders have been diversifying their foreign exchange reserves away from dollardenominated assets. Even after adjusting for exchange rate effects, the dollar share of foreign exchange reserves

reported in the IMF COFER database has been gradually declining (left panel of figure 12). As shown in the

right panel of figure 12, we estimate that since 2009 China appears to be diversifying its foreign exchange

reserves by allocating a smaller share of newly acquired reserves into U.S. assets.

16
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18
Exhibit 1 07-11-11

Interest Rates

 0

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

 10

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Percent

Intended federal funds rate, midpoint

Treasury 5-year zero-coupon yield, continuously compounded

Treasury 10-year zero-coupon yield, continuously compounded

 -4

 -2

 0

 2

 4

 6

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

-10 

-5 

0 

5 

10 

15 

Percent Percent

Treasury 5-year term premium (right scale)

Treasury 6-year excess return realized 1 yr. ahead (left scale)

 -1

 0

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

 10

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Percent

Treasury 5-year term premium

Treasury 5-year zero-coupon yield, continuously compounded

Figure 1: Federal funds rate and Treasury yields.

Supply and Demand for Treasury and Agency Securities

 0

 2

 4

 6

 8

 10

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

Trillions of dollars

Federal Reserve holdings

Treasuries available for purchase

Domestic holdings

Total foreign holdings

Foreign private holdings

Foreign official holdings

 -20

 0

 20

 40

 60

 80

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Billions of dollars

Total foreign official inflows

Foreign official inflows into Treasuries & agencies

Foreign official inflows into Treasuries

monthly rate

 0

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

Trillions of dollars

Total foreign holdings

Rest of world

Europe*

Oil exporters

Japan

Other EMEs

China

Figure 2: Foreign official inflows into Treasury and agency securities, expressed as a 6-month

moving average.

19
 0

 2

 4

 6

 8

 10

 12

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

Trillions of dollars

 0.3

 0.4

 0.5

 0.6

 0.7

 0.8

 0.9

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

LSAP begins

Figure 3: Global foreign exchange reserves. Source: IMF.

Exhibit 3 07-11-11

Supply and Demand for Treasury and Agency Securities

 0

 2

 4

 6

 8

 10

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

Trillions of dollars

Federal Reserve holdings

Treasuries available for purchase

Domestic holdings

Total foreign holdings

Foreign private holdings

Foreign official holdings

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

Trillions of dollars

Total foreign holdings

Rest of world

Europe*

Oil exporters

Japan

Other EMEs

China

Figure 4: Supply and demand for U.S. Treasury securities.

20
 0

 2

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

 -20

 0

 20

 40

 60

 80

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Billions of dollars

Total foreign official inflows

Foreign official inflows into Treasuries & agencies

Foreign official inflows into Treasuries

monthly rate

 0

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

Trillions of dollars

Total (official+private) foreign holdings

Rest of world

Europe*

Oil exporters

Japan

Other EMEs

China

Figure 5: Geography of foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities.

Time: t t+1

Borrow funds for 1 year to Sell 6-year bond

purchase 6-year Treasury bond as a 5-year bond

and pay off loan.

1-year holding period:

Foreign flows and other explanatory 

variables observed

Figure 6: Excess returns realized at time t + 1.

Exhibit 1 07-11-11

Interest Rates

 0

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

 10

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Percent

Intended federal funds rate, midpoint

Treasury 5-year zero-coupon yield, continuously compounded

Treasury 10-year zero-coupon yield, continuously compounded

 -4

 -2

 0

 2

 4

 6

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

-10 

-5 

0 

5 

10 

15 

Percent Percent

Treasury 5-year term premium (right scale)

Treasury 6-year excess return realized 1 yr. ahead (left scale)

 -1

 0

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

 10

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Percent

Treasury 5-year term premium

Treasury 5-year zero-coupon yield, continuously compounded

Figure 7: 5-year term premium and future realized excess returns.

21
 0

 10

 20

 30

 40

 50

 60

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Percent

Foreign official holdings of Treas. securities / Treas. securities outstanding

Foreign private holdings of Treas. securities / Treas. securities outstanding

 0

 10

 20

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Figure 8: Foreign official and foreign private holdings of U.S. Treasury securities as a share of

Treasury securities outstanding.

Exhibit 3 07-11-11

Holdings as a share of outstanding

 20

 30

 40

 50

 60

 70

 80

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Percent

Foreign holdings of Treas. notes and bonds / notes and bonds outstanding

Foreign holdings of T-Bills. / T-Bills outstanding

0

 10

 20

 30

 40

 50

 60

Percent

Foreign official holdings of Treas. notes and bonds / notes and bonds outstanding

Foreign private holdings of Treas. notes and bonds / notes and bonds outstanding

Figure 9: Foreign holdings of long-term (notes and bonds) and short-term (bills) as a share of

these respective securities outstanding.

22
 20

 30

 40

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

 0

 10

 20

 30

 40

 50

 60

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Percent

Foreign official holdings of Treas. securities / Treas. securities outstanding

Foreign private holdings of Treas. securities / Treas. securities outstanding

 0

 10

 20

 30

 40

 50

 60

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

Percent

Foreign official holdings of Treas. notes and bonds / notes and bonds outstanding

Foreign private holdings of Treas. notes and bonds / notes and bonds outstanding

Figure 10: Foreign official and foreign private holdings of Treasury notes and bonds as a share

of Treasury notes and bonds outstanding.

Exhibit 1 07-11-11

Custody holdings at New York Fed

 1.0

 1.5

 2.0

 2.5

 3.0

2008 2009 2010 2011

Trillions of dollars

 0.3

 0.4

 0.5

 0.6

 0.7

 0.8

 0.9

 1.0

 1.1

 1.2

 1.3

 1.4

 1.5

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Percent

Inter-quartile range of yead ahead CPI forecast

4-quarter moving average

LSAP begins

Figure 11: Inflation uncertainty as measured by the dispersion of forecasts for year-ahead CPI

inflation. Source: Survey of Professional Forecasters.

23
Exhibit 1 07-11-11

Reserves diversification

 55

 60

 65

 70

2003 2005 2007 2009 2011

Percent

Advanced economies

All countries

Emerging market economies

 20

 40

 60

 80

 100

2003 2005 2007 2009 2011

Percent

Figure 12: Left panel: Dollar-denominated share of foreign exchange reserves. Estimates based

on COFER data adjusted for unallocated reserves and with non-dollar reserves valued at 2011-

Q1 exchange rates. Right panel: Estimated U.S. share of Chinese new foreign exchange reserve

accumulations. Authors’ estimates based on CEIC, Peoples Bank of China, COFER, IFS, and

Treasury International Capital Data.

24
Table 1: Term premium regressions (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

OLS: IV: 1st Stage IV: 2nd Stage IV: 1st Stage IV: 2nd Stage

ΔTP t ΔFOI t / DEBT t-1 ΔTP t ΔFOI t / GDP t-1 ΔTP t

Flow Variables

ΔFOI t / DEBT t-1 0.052* -0.135**

(0.030) (0.061)

ΔFPVT / DEBT t-1 0.046** -0.026 0.041

(0.021) (0.052) (0.027)

ΔFOI t / GDP t-1 -0.696**

(0.343)

ΔFPVT / GDP t-1 0.017 0.182*

(0.053) (0.110)

Control Variables

ΔIP t

yoy 0.025* 0.005 0.027* 0.000 0.026*

(0.013) (0.033) (0.014) (0.008) (0.015)

ΔIP t-1

yoy -0.033** 0.010 -0.033** 0.004 -0.031**

(0.013) (0.033) (0.015) (0.008) (0.015)

ΔVIX t -0.007** -0.017** -0.010*** -0.004** -0.011***

(0.003) (0.007) (0.003) (0.002) (0.003)

ΔVIX t-1 -0.001 -0.017** -0.005 -0.004*** -0.005

(0.003) (0.007) (0.003) (0.002) (0.003)

ΔUS_VOL t-1 0.019 0.018 0.018 0.006 0.021

(0.020) (0.052) (0.022) (0.012) (0.022)

ΔDE_VOL t 0.011 -0.056 0.006 -0.015 0.003

(0.026) (0.068) (0.028) (0.016) (0.030)

ΔSTR_BUDGET_BALANCE t 0.089** -0.235** 0.023 -0.042* 0.020

(0.040) (0.101) (0.042) (0.023) (0.043)

ΔLP5 t-1 -0.005 0.002 -0.004 0.000 -0.005

(0.004) (0.010) (0.004) (0.002) (0.004)

OIL_DEMAND_SHOCK t 0.010 -0.026 0.005 -0.006 0.004

(0.010) (0.026) (0.011) (0.006) (0.012)

ΔCP 1-5

t-1 0.035* -0.058 0.025 -0.014 0.022

(0.020) (0.051) (0.024) (0.012) (0.025)

ΔCP 6-9

t-1 0.018*** -0.010 0.016** -0.002 0.016**

(0.006) (0.015) (0.006) (0.004) (0.007)

Instruments

JPYFXINT t 0.016*** 0.003***

(0.003) (0.001)

OIL_SUPPLY_SHOCK t 0.070 0.016

(0.045) (0.011)

Observations 160 160 160 160 160

R-squared 0.266 0.447 0.070 0.342 0.013

Durbin-Watson 1.802 1.488 1.441

Cragg-Donald Wald F-Stat 15.72 9.894

Stock-Yogo critical value, 10% 19.93 19.93

Pagan-Hall Test (P-Value) 0.671 0.789

Cumby-Huizinga Test (P-Value) 0.0159 0.0158

Endogeneity Test (P-Value) 0.0192 0.0339

Hansen J Test (P-Value) 0.3498 0.3147 Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. ∗∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗p < 0.05, ∗p < 0.1. All specifications

include a constant and a linear trend.

25
Table 2: Alternative instrumental variable specifications for term premium regressions

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

IV: IV: IV: IV: IV:

ALL ALL MID-EAST OIL

COUNTRIES COUNTRIES JAPAN CHINA EXPORTERS

First Stage: Instruments

JPYFXINT t 0.019*** 0.019*** 0.017***

(0.003) (0.003) (0.002)

ΔBOP_CN t 0.006 0.007 0.006**

(0.006) (0.006) (0.002)

OIL_SUPPLY_SHOCK t 0.061 0.019**

(0.051) (0.008)

Second Stage: Official Flows

ΔFOI t / DEBT t-1 -0.140** -0.145**

(0.057) (0.058)

ΔFOI_JAPAN t / DEBT t-1 -0.147**

(0.059)

ΔFOI_CHINA t / DEBT t-1 0.207

(0.423)

ΔFOI_MIDEAST t / DEBT t-1 -0.000

(0.862)

Observations 126 126 160 126 160

R-squared - 2nd Stage 0.106 0.095 0.210 0.305 0.254

Cragg-Donald Wald F-Stat 18.25 12.71 97.59 6.053 6.119

Stock-Yogo critical value, 10% 19.93 22.30 16.38 16.38 16.38

Endogenous Variables 1 1 1 1 1

Exogenous Instruments 2 3 1 1 1

Pagan-Hall Test (P-Value) 0.862 0.890 0.429 0.539 0.545

Cumby-Huizinga Test (P-Value) 0.138 0.127 0.0169 0.387 0.192

Endogeneity Test (P-Value) 0.00932 0.00882 0.0229 0.925 0.408

Hansen J Test (P-Value) 0.9074 0.9013 n.a. n.a. n.a.

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. ∗∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗p < 0.05, ∗p < 0.1. All specifications include

the same set of explanatory variables listed in Table 1.

26
Table 3: Term-premium regressions using foreign official inflows into both Treasuries and

agencies

(1) (2) (3)

IV: IV: IV:

ALL ALL ALL

COUNTRIES COUNTRIES COUNTRIES

First Stage: Instruments

JPYFXINT t 0.002*** 0.003*** 0.003***

(0.001) (0.001) (0.001)

ΔBOP_CN t 0.004** 0.004**

(0.002) (0.002)

OIL_SUPPLY_SHOCK t 0.008

(0.012)

Second Stage: Official Flows

ΔFOI_TA t / GDP t-1 -0.983** -0.606 -0.637*

(0.489) (0.382) (0.385)

Observations 160 126 126

R-squared - 2nd Stage n.a. 0.116 0.100

Cragg-Donald Wald F-Stat 7.829 10.29 6.950

Stock-Yogo critical value, 10% 16.38 19.93 22.3

Endogenous Variables 1 1 1

Exogenous Instruments 1 2 3

Pagan-Hall Test (P-Value) 0.850 0.847 0.878

Cumby-Huizinga Test (P-Value) 0.0101 0.201 0.185

Endogeneity Test (P-Value) 0.0433 0.0661 0.0577

Hansen J Test (P-Value) n.a. 0.3486 0.5437

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. ∗∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗p < 0.05, ∗p < 0.1. All specifications include

the same set of explanatory variables listed in Table 1.

27
Table 4: Cointegration Tests

12 lags 10 lags 8 lags 6 lags 4 lags 2 lags 1 lag

Parameters 123 105 87 69 51 33 24Log-likelihood 2.7 -15 -30 -41 -52 -73 -88SC 4.07 3.67 3.24 2.74 2.25 1.97 1.88

HQ 2.61 2.43 2.22 1.94 1.66 1.60 1.60AIC 1.60 1.58 1.52 1.40 1.26 1.34 1.42

Residual testsSerial Indep. 0.58 0.39 0.74 0.61 0.91 0.10 0.00

Normality 0.55 0.32 0.70 0.49 0.44 0.04 0.09Hetero 0.26 0.20 0.50 0.72 0.36 0.16 0.01

Rank 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1Trace test 55.6 9.19 46.0 7.3 35.6 3.7 30.4 3.54 36.0 6.64 34.1 7.67 24.2 6.82

(p-value) 0 0.35 0 0.55 0.01 0.92 0.04 0.93 0.01 0.63 0.01 0.51 0.2 0.60

Max test 46.4 8.95 38.7 6.82 31.9 3.61 26.9 3.53 29.4 6.17 26.4 6.91 17.3 5.82

(p-value) 0 0.30 0 0.52 0.001 0.89 0.01 0.90 0.00 0.60 0.01 0.51 0.16 0.64

Trace test 42.3 6.99 36.9 5.86 30.1 3.13 26.9 3.13 33.3 6.13 32.8 7.38 23.7 6.7

(p-value) 0.00 0.59 0.01 0.71 0.05 0.95 0.11 0.95 0.02 0.68 0.02 0.54 0.22 0.62

Max test 35.3 6.8 31.1 5.47 27.0 3.05 23.8 3.12 27.1 5.7 25.4 6.65 17.0 5.71

(p-value) 0 0.52 0.00 0.68 0.01 0.93 0.02 0.93 0.01 0.66 0.01 0.54 0.18 0.66

28
Table 5: VAR Long-Run Coefficients

12 lags 10 lags 8 lags 6 lags 4 lags 2 lags

Cointegrating vector, β

Term premium (normalized) 1 1 1 1 1 1

Foreign official 0.046 0.055 0.061 0.062 0.056 0.055

Foreign private 0.061 0.068 0.059 0.05 0.024 0.037

T-stat - cointegration coef.

Foreign official 5.782 5.939 5.348 4.633 3.803 3.403

Foreign private 2.883 2.758 2.016 1.521 0.676 0.952

Loading Factors, α

Term premium -0.481 -0.341 -0.23 -0.21 -0.201 -0.186

Foreign official -0.54 -0.567 -0.481 -0.295 -0.197 -0.153

Foreign private 0.096 0.214 0.338 0.23 0.14 -0.017

T-stat. - loading factors

Term premium -5.831 -5.091 -4.164 -4.559 -5.145 -5.129

Foreign official -2.378 -3.044 -3.184 -2.288 -1.795 -1.442

Foreign private 0.274 0.776 1.514 1.219 0.849 -0.113

29
Table 6: Excess returns regressions

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

OLS: IV: 1st Stage IV: 2nd Stage IV: 1st Stage† IV: 2nd Stage†

XR_6 t Σ12FOIt / DEBT t-12 XR_6 t Δ(Σ 12 FOIt / DEBT t-12 ) ΔXR_6 t

Flow Variables

Σ12FOIt / DEBT t-12 0.172 0.595*** 0.424

(0.119) (0.184) (0.545)

Σ12FPVT t / DEBT t-12 0.656*** 0.056 0.616*** -0.036 -0.723***

(0.144) (0.067) (0.137) (0.053) (0.251)

Control Variables

IP t

yoy -0.942*** 0.198 -0.988*** -0.031 -0.282

(0.330) (0.154) (0.317) (0.074) (0.328)

IP t-1

yoy 0.293 -0.246 0.303 -0.093 0.106

(0.321) (0.150) (0.310) (0.073) (0.336)

VIX t 0.156*** -0.047* 0.175*** -0.019* 0.139***

(0.057) (0.027) (0.044) (0.011) (0.049)

DE_VOL t -0.361 -0.704*** -0.155 -0.037 -0.730*

(0.491) (0.251) (0.524) (0.097) (0.427)

US_VOL t-1 0.026 -0.409*** -0.095 0.073 -0.514*

(0.315) (0.155) (0.300) (0.069) (0.312)

LP5 t-1 0.001 -0.069* 0.040 -0.010 0.035

(0.081) (0.038) (0.084) (0.015) (0.070)

Σ 12 OIL_DEMAND_SHOCKt -0.297*** -0.063 -0.261*** -0.010 -0.061

(0.112) (0.056) (0.095) (0.037) (0.164)

CP 1-5

t-13 2.266*** -0.259 2.601*** 0.059 -0.147

(0.380) (0.176) (0.428) (0.068) (0.294)

CP 6-9

t-13 0.423*** -0.052 0.395*** 0.006 0.048

(0.143) (0.067) (0.144) (0.023) (0.111)

RISK APPETITEt -0.494*** -0.050 -0.484*** -0.046 -0.501**

(0.124) (0.058) (0.106) (0.048) (0.198)

Σ 12 STR_BUDGET_BALt /GDP t-12 0.168 -0.730*** 0.627** -0.101 -0.549

(0.310) (0.145) (0.284) (0.182) (0.892)

Instruments

Σ 12 JPYFXINT 0.025*** 0.024***

(0.002) (0.003)

Σ 12 OIL_SUPPLY_SHOCKt 0.239*** 0.051

(0.057) (0.040)

Observations 158 158 158 158 158

R-squared 0.784 0.915 0.765 0.365 0.104

Durbin-Watson 1.326 0.421 1.486

Cragg-Donald Wald F-Stat 92.79 32.77

Stock-Yogo critical value, 10% 19.93 19.93

Pagan-Hall Test (P-Value) 0.224 0.928

Cumby-Huizinga Test (P-Value) 6.84e-06 0.0970

Endogeneity Test (P-Value) 5.01e-06 0.00374

Hansen J Test (P-Value) 0.3563 0.3902

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. ∗∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗p < 0.05, ∗p < 0.1. All specifications include

a constant and a linear trend. †Explanatory variables in this specification are expressed as first

differences.

30
Table 7: Alternative instrumental variable specifications for excess return regressions

(1) (2) (3)

IV: IV: IV:

ALL ALL ALL

COUNTRIES COUNTRIES COUNTRIES

First Stage: Instruments

Σ 12 JPYFXINT 0.026***

(0.002)

Σ 12 OIL_SUPPLY_SHOCK t 0.357***

(0.079)

Σ 12 BOP_CN t -0.002

(0.010)

Second Stage: Official Flows

Σ12FOI t / DEBT t-12 0.547*** 0.874** -2.991

(0.195) (0.357) (11.170)

Observations 158 158 115

R-squared - 2nd Stage 0.770 0.732 0.069

Cragg-Donald Wald F-Stat 150.3 20.25 0.0469

Stock-Yogo critical value, 10% 16.38 16.38 16.38

Endogenous Variables 1 1 1

Exogenous Instruments 1 1 1

Pagan-Hall Test (P-Value) 0.157 0.678 1

Cumby-Huizinga Test (P-Value) 7.43e-06 4.46e-05 0.830

Endogeneity Test (P-Value) 0.000294 0.0153 0.549

Hansen J Test (P-Value) n.a. n.a. n.a.

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. ∗∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗p < 0.05, ∗p < 0.1. All specifications include

a constant and a linear trend.

31
Table 8: Comparison of estimates of effects of purchases on Treasury yields

Basis points

per 100 Investor Data

$billion type frequency

Short-run “flow” effect1. This study: Term-premium regs. -46 to -50 For. Off. Monthly flows2. D’Amico and King (2011) -67 Fed Daily purchases3. Bernanke, Reinhart, and Sack (2004) -66 Jpn. Official Daily interventions4. McCauley and Jiang (2004) -70 to -100 For. Off. Weekly flowsMedium-run “flow” effect1. This study: Excess returns regs. -39 to -62 For. Off. 12-month flows2. Warnock and Warnock (2009) -68 For. Off. 12-month flows3. Rudebusch, Swanson, and Wu (2006) no effect For. Off. 12-month flowsLong-run “stock” effect1. This study: Cointegration -17 to -20 For. Off. Holdings (level)2. Bertaut, DeMarco, Kamin, and Tryon (2011) -11 to -15 For. Off. Holdings (level)3. Gagnon, Raskin, Remache, and Sack (2011) -2 to -5 Fed Cumulated purchases4. D’Amico and King (2011) -10 Fed Cumulated purchases5. Hamilton and Wu (2011) -4 Fed Cumulated purchases

Note: The numbers reported here are taken directly from the studies and have not taken into account the growth

in Treasuries outstanding since the end of the various different estimation samples. Such an adjustment wouldgenerally make the effect estimated by older studies smaller.

32
International Finance Discussion Papers 

 

IFDP 

Number Titles Author(s) 

33 

 2012 

1040 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Missing Import Price Changes Etienne Gagnon

 and Pass-through Benjamin R. Mandel 

 Robert J. Vigfusson

 2011 

1039 Aggregate Hours Worked in OECD Countries: New Lee E. Ohanian

 Measurement and Implications for Business Cycles Andrea Raffo

1038 Exports Versus Multinational Production Under Nominal Logan T. Lewis 

 Uncertainty 

1037 Are Recoveries from Banking and Financial Crises Really Greg Howard 

 So Different? Robert Martin 

 Beth Anne Wilson 

1036 Monetary Regime Switches and Unstable Objectives Davide Debortoli 

 Ricardo Nunes 

1035 The Variance Risk Premium Around the World Juan M. Londono 

1034 Loose Commitment in Medium-Scale Macroeconomic Davide Debortoli 

 Models: Theory and Applications Junior Maih 

 Ricardo Nunes 

1033 The Growth of Chinese Exports: An Examination of the Brett Berger 

 Detailed Trade Data Robert F. Martin 

 

1032 Housing and Debt Over the Life Cycle and Over the Matteo Iacoviello 

 Business Cycle Marina Pavan 

1031 Oil Efficiency, Demand, and Prices: A Tale of Ups Martin Bodenstein 

 and Downs Luca Guerrieri 

1030 Empirical Estimation of Trend and Cyclical Export Jane Haltmaier 

 Elasticities 

1029 Firm Default and Aggregate Fluctuations Tor Jacobson 

 Jesper Lindé 

 Kasper Roszbach

 
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC 20551. 

Email: publications-bog@frb.gov. Fax (202) 728-5886. 

34 

1028 ABS Inflows to the United States and the Global Financial Carol Bertaut 

 Crisis Laurie Pounder 

 DeMarco 

 Steve Kamin 

 Ralph Tryon 

1027 Housing Wealth and Consumption Matteo Iacoviello 

1026 The Revealed Competitiveness of U.S. Exports Massimo Del Gatto 

 Filippo de Mauro 

 Joseph Gruber 

 Benjamin R. Mandel 

1025 Evaluating the Forecasting Performance of Commodity Trevor A. Reeve 

 Futures Prices Robert J. Vigfusson 

1024 U.S. Domestic and International Financial Reform Policy: Daniel E. Nolle 

 Are G20 Commitments and the Dodd-Frank Act in Sync? 

1023 Optimal Monetary Policy in an Operational Medium-Sized Malin Adolfson 

 DSGE Model Stefan Laseen 

 Jesper Lindé 

 Lars E.O. Svensson 

1022 Forecasting the Price of Oil Ron Alquist 

 Lutz Kilian 

 Robert J. Vigfusson 

1021 Liquidity and Reserve Requirements in Brazil Patrice Robitaille 

1020 Trade Credit and International Trade during the 2008-09 Brahima Coulibaly 

 Global Financial Crisis Horacio Sapriza 

 Andrei Zlate 

1019 Limited Market Participation and Asset Prices in the Presence Bo Sun 

 of Earnings Management 

1018 Quantitative Easing and Bank Lending: Evidence from David Bowman 

 Japan Fang Cai 

 Sally Davies 

 Steven Kamin 

1017 Where are Global and U.S. Trade Heading in the Joseph W. Gruber 

 Aftermath of the Trade Collapse: Issues and Alternative Filippo di Mauro 

 Scenarios Bernd Schnatz 

 Nico Zorell