We study how well a New Keynesian business cycle model can explain the observed behavior of nominal interest rates. We focus on two puzzles raised in previous literature. First, Donaldson, Johnsen, and Mehra (1990) show that while in the U.S. nominal term structure the interest rates are...

Monthly term structures are fit to US Treasury inflation-indexed securities using a QN (Quadratic-Natural) spline, developed in this paper, and also to conventional nominal securities of comparable maturities. The ratio of the real to nominal discount functions is an implicit forward CPI...