This paper addresses the ability of central banks to affect the structure of interest rates. We assess the causal relationship between the short‐term Effective Federal Funds Rate (FF) and long‐term interest rates associated with both public and private bonds and specifically, the 10‐Year Treasury Bond (GB10Y) and the Moody's Aaa Corporate Bond (AAA). To do this, we apply Structural Vector Autoregressive models to U.S. monthly data for the 1954–2018 period. Based on results derived from impulse response functions and forecast error variance decomposition, we find: a bidirectional relationship when GB10Y is considered as the long‐term rate and a unidirectional relationship that moves from short‐ to long‐term interest rates when AAA is considered. These conclusions show that monetary policy is able to permanently affect long‐term interest rates and the central bank has a certain degree of freedom in setting the levels of the short‐term policy rate.

中文翻译：

---

货币政策和长期利率：来自美国经济的证据

本文探讨了央行影响利率结构的能力。我们评估了短期有效联邦基金利率（FF）与与公共和私人债券相关的长期利率之间的因果关系，特别是10年期国债（GB 10 Y）和穆迪Aaa企业债券（AAA）。为此，我们将结构矢量自回归模型应用于1954–2018年期间的美国月度数据。根据脉冲响应函数和预测误差方差分解得出的结果，我们发现：GB 10 Y时为双向关系被认为是长期利率，并且在考虑AAA时从短期利率变为长期利率的单向关系。这些结论表明，货币政策能够永久性地影响长期利率，而中央银行在设定短期政策利率水平时具有一定的自由度。