Real yields and growth Found the following very interesting statement on bond prices,

"The yield on a risk-free government bond should equal the growth in nominal GDP since that represents the opportunity cost of holding a government bond both in terms of investment opportunities (real GDP) and the time value of money (inflation)"

http://globalfinancialdata.com/7-centuries-of-government-bond-yields/

Question) How does one square the circle of this statement and the "expectations hypothesis"? 

Most significant factors in the price of a goverments bonds

Question)Is future growth or short term rates that determine longer rate? or are these two the same somehow?
The first statement is a result from an old economic model.

The two views can be reconciled by the following argument: the central bank is constrained by the structure of the economy as to its choice of the policy rate. If persistently too low, inflation rises, and if persistently too high, the economy risks falling into deflation. 

In this case, the central bank allegedly needs to keep the real policy rate near the growth rate of real GDP. Arguably, not many people are convinced that is precisely the case, rather that there is a “natural rate if interest” (now preferably referred to as $r^*$) that the policy rate needs to revert to.

The argument is then that bond investors will be aware of this tendency, and thus bond yields will revert to the long-term average.

However, one would need to search for the modern literature on $r^*$ to get a better handle on preferred ways to estimate it. I am in the camp that $r^*$ does not exist, so I am not the person to offer such references.