This paper examines rational expectations in the Treasury bill market from 1961 to 1988 with a risk premium specified to be proportional to the volatility of excess returns using instrumental variables. From 1961 to 1972 and from 1972 to 1979, rational expectations cannot be rejected, and both the predictive power of the yield curve and the risk premium are highly significant. By contrast, with just a constant risk premium and with a risk premium proxied by moving averages of absolute interest rate changes, rational expectations are rejected for each subperiod, and the yield curve has significant predictive information only from 1972 to 1979.

This paper examines cash management bill announcements in an event study framework and finds that segmentation in the Treasury bill market is widespread and not limited to bills maturing across month-ends. Announcements of cash management bills, which represent unexpected additional supplies of outstanding Treasury bills, cause the yields on these bills to rise significantly relative to yields on adjacent maturity bills. This paper also finds, consistent with other studies, that segmentation is greater at the short end of the bill market.

This study uses intraday when-issued rate quotes to examine the rewards and risks of the Treasury coupon auctions for bidders who face different tradeoffs between the winner's curse and quantity risk. The data indicate that markups of auction average rates over bid when-issued rates at auction times average 3/8 basis point. I also find that when-issued rates react as strongly to bidding aggressiveness at auctions before the auction results are announced as theydo afterward, and that quantity risk is as important as the winner's curse.

This study examines the Treasury's experiment with single-price bond auctions in the mid-1970s and finds that, controlling for factors unrelated to auction technique, markups of auction average rates over when-issued rates shortly after auctions were a statistically significant seven to eight basis points higher at single-price auctions than at discriminating-price auctions. These results suggest that single-price auctions raised Treasury borrowing costs by roughly 3/4 percent of the issuing price of auctioned securities. Copyright 1994 by MIT Press.

ABSTRACT This paper shows that the spread between the 3–month Treasury bill and the federal funds rate has significant predictive power for the future change in the federal funds rate during the volatile nonborrowed reserves operating regime, but it has less and no predictive power during the borrowed reserves regime and the federal funds targeting regime, respectively. These findings suggest that Treasury bill rates forecast future federal funds rates most accurately when the Federal Reserve follows a well‐defined rule that does not smooth the impact of shocks on the federal funds rate.

This paper shows that the spread between the 3–month Treasury bill and the federal funds rate has significant predictive power for the future change in the federal funds rate during the volatile nonborrowed reserves operating regime, but it has less and no predictive power during the borrowed reserves regime and the federal funds targeting regime, respectively. These findings suggest that Treasury bill rates forecast future federal funds rates most accurately when the Federal Reserve follows a well-defined rule that does not smooth the impact of shocks on the federal funds rate.

This paper shows that the spread between the three-month Treasury bill and the federal funds rate has significant predictive power for the future change in the federal funds rate during the volatile nonborrowed reserves operating regime, but it has less and no predictive power during the borrowed reserves regime and the federal funds targeting regime, respectively. These findings suggest that Treasury bill rates forecast future federal funds rates most accurately when the Federal Reserve follows a well-defined rule that does not smooth the impact of shocks on the federal funds rate.