An empirical decomposition of the liquidity premium in breakeven inflation rates

In this paper, we propose a novel way to calculate the relative liquidity premium between the nominal and inflation-indexed government bonds. We assume that both nominal and inflation-indexed bonds contain liquidity premium. Moreover, the methodology that is used in the paper does not need survey data to extract changes in the long-run inflation expectations. Hence, we can report the changes in the long-run inflation expectations on a daily basis. We apply this methodology to the Turkish bond market data. Results of the paper indicate the existence of a relative liquidity premium that takes values between -31 basis points and 43 basis points for the period between October 2012 and November 2015. This result also shows that the inflation-indexed bonds sometimes can be more liquid than nominal bonds in Turkey.