Implied Interest Rate Skew, Term Premiums, And The "Conundrum"

The skew, irrespective of the mean and variance, of investors' interest rate expectations may affect required bond yields over expected short rates. Indeed, evidence suggests that the near-term skew of the option-implied distribution of expected short-term interest rates correlates with distant-horizon term premiums, as derived from a latent-factor affine term structure model (ATSM). Reduced-form models that include skew generally fit the data well and actually better "Explain" variation in the term premium during the so-called "Conundrum" than during other periods of the May 1989 to May 2006 sample.