Risks and risk premia in the US Treasury market

Abstract

We analyze the risk-return trade-off in the US Treasury market using a term structure model that features volatility-in-mean effects of multiple sources, and yet preserves tractable bond prices. We find a strong positive relation between risks and risk premia over the 1966-2018 period. While interest-rate risk is the main driver of such positive relation, macro risk plays a non-trivial role, and its omission leads to unstable estimates of the trade-off. Notably, macro risk contributes to the surge and consequent fall of risk premia around the 1980s, whereas it moves inversely with risk premia during the recent ‘low yield’ period.