Suppose a consumer sets consumption equal to income each period, rather than follow the optimal permanent income decision rule. How much utility does he lose? This paper finds that the answer is typically less than 10-$1 per quarter in environments specified by popular tests on aggregate data, and concludes that the theory does not make predictions in those environments that are robust to small costs of information, transactions, etc.

Suppose a consumer sets consumption equal to income each period, rather than following the optimal permanent income decision rule. How much utility does he lose? This paper finds that the answer is typically less than 10 cents-$1 per quarter in environments specified by popular tests on aggregate data. It includes calculations of the costs of excess sensitivity and excess smoothness to income and interest rate changes and the costs of ignoring information. It concludes that the theory does not make predictions for aggregate tests that are robust to small costs, such as information or transactions.

We study time variation in expected excess bond returns. We run regressions of one-year excess returns on initial forward rates. We find that a single factor, a single tent-shaped linear combination of forward rates, predicts excess returns on one-to five-year maturity bonds with R 2 up to 0.44. The return-forecasting factor is countercyclical and forecasts stock returns. An important component of the return-forecasting factor is unrelated to the level, slope, and curvature movements described by most term structure models. We document that measurement errors do not affect our central results.

We measure monetary policy shocks as changes in the Fed funds target rate that surprise bond markets in daily data. These shock series avoid the omitted variable, time-varying parameter, and orthogonalization problem of monthly VARs, and do not impose the expectations hypothesis. We find surprisingly large and persistent responses of bond yields to these shocks. 10 year rates rise as much as 8/10 of a percent to a one percent target shock. The usual view that monetary policy only temporarily raises long term rates and influences inflation would lead one to predict a negative long rate response.