This paper provides empirical evidence on the information in the term structure for longer maturities about both future inflation and the term structure of real interest rates. The evidence indicates that there is substantial information in the longer maturity term structure about futureinflation: the slope of the term structure does have a great deal of predictive power for future changes in inflation. On the other hand, at the longer maturities, the term structure of nominal interest rates contains very little information about the term structure of real interest rates. These results are strikingly different from those found for very short-term maturities, six months or less, in previous work. For maturities of six months or less, the term structure contains no information about the future path of inflation, but it does contain a great deal of information about the term structure of real interest rates. The evidence in this paper does indicate that, at longer maturities, the term structure of interest rates can be used to help assess future inflationary pressures: when the slope of the term structure steepens, it is an indication that the inflation rate will rise in the future and when the slope falls, it is an indication that the inflation rate will fall. However, we must still remain cautious about using the evidence presented here to advocate that the Federal Reserve should target on the term structure in conducting monetary policy. A change in Federal Reserve operating procedures which focuses on the term structure may well cause the relationship between the term structure and future inflation to shift, with the result that the term structure no longer remains an accurate guide to the path of future inflation. If this were to occur, Federal Reserve monetary policy could go far astray by focusing on the term structure of interest rates.

This paper provides evidence on what the term structure (for maturities of twelve months or less) tells us about future inflation in ten OECD countries. The empirical results on the information in the term structure contrast with those that find that the level of interest rates help forecast the future level of inflation. Instead, they indicate that for the majority of the countries in the sample, the term structure does not contain a great deal of information about the future path of inflation. The results for France, the United Kingdom and Germany tell a different story, however. In these countries, the term structure contains a highly significant amount of information about future changes in inflation. The evidence in this paper suggests that central banks for most of the countries studied here should exercise some caution in using the term structure of interest rates as a guide for assessing inflationary pressures in the economy, as is currently under consideration in the U.S. central bank. Although there is significant information in the term structure about the future path of inflation for a few of the countries, this is not a result that is true in general. The empirical evidence does reveal, however, that for every country studied except the United Kingdom, there is a great deal of information in the term structure of nominal' interest rates about the term structure of real' interest rates. This finding is an extremely useful one because it suggests that for most countries researchers can examine observable data on the nominal term structure to provide them with information about the behavior of the real' term structure.

During the past 15 years a large number of studies have used the approach suggested by Mishkin (Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 105 (1990), No. 3, pp. 815-828; Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 25 (1990), No. 1, pp. 77-95) to examine the information content of the term structure of interest rates about future inflation. The empirical results of these studies, however, are very mixed and often not supportive of the Mishkin model. In addition, many results indicate that the term structure of interest rates only contains limited information about future inflation and that the relationship between the term structure of interest rates and future inflation may not be stable over time. In this paper an extension of the Mishkin model allowing for time-varying expected real interest rates and inflation risk premia is suggested and tested using monthly UK data from 1983:1 to 2004:10. The empirical results show that while the standard Mishkin model indicates that the term structure of interest rates contains limited information about future inflation, the extended Mishkin model indicates the contrary, i.e. the term structure of interest rates contains much information about future inflation when account is taken of time-varying expected real interest rates and inflation risk premia - especially when the long end of the term structure of interest rates is considered. Furthermore, the results indicate a potential structural break in the relationship between the term structure of interest rates and future inflation around the time the Bank of England started targeting inflation rates.

It is often suggested that the slope of the term structure of interest rates contains information about the expected future path of inflation. Mishkin (1990) has recently shown that the spread between the 12-month and 3-month interest rates helps to predict the difference between the 12-month and 3-month inflation rates. His approach however, lacks a theoretical foundation, other than the (rejected) hypothesis that the real interest rate is constant. This paper applies a simple existing theoretical framework, which allows the real interest rate to vary in the short run but converge to a constant in the long run, to the problem of predicting the inflation spread. It is shown that the appropriate indicator of expected inflation can make use of the entire length of the yield curve, in particular by estimating the steepness of a specific nonlinear transformation of the curve, rather than being restricted to a spread between two points. The resulting indicator, besides having a firmer theoretical foundation does a relatively good job of predicting the inflation rate over the period 1960 to 1988.