Global trends in real risk free rates

We examine real returns to government debt of the G7 countries, for both short and long maturities. Our focus is on returns to fixed income investing rather than contemporaneous yields. We find evidence that investments in the same maturity across countries may be modeled as a cointegrated process, in a vector error correction framework, with common trends separated into their permanent and transitory components for the system. Our findings are based on analysis of both short-term maturities and long-term maturities. However, the structure varies excessively across maturities and time frames, with recent data showing less integration.