This paper proposes linear higher order conditions on the term structure that allow to compute valuation bounds for any deterministic cash stream. Starting from bounds on the forward rate curve and its derivatives, which are nonlinear in the discount factors, we derive linear conditions that are...

The effect of incomplete information on the term structure of interest rates is examined in the framework of a pure exchange economy under uncertainty. When the growth rate of the aggregate endowment is known, the term structure is flat and deterministic. When agents do not observe the...

To assess the predictive content of the interest rate term spread for future economic growth, we distinguish short-run from long-run predictability by using two different approaches. First, following Dufour and Renault (1998) a test procedure is proposed to test for causality at different...

We provide a framework for the analysis of term structures of credit spreads on corporate bonds in the presence of informational asymmetries. While bond investors observe default incidents, we suppose that they have incomplete information on the firm's assets and/or the threshold asset level at...

In this paper I analyse the effects of ignoring level shifts in the data generating process (DGP) on systems cointegration tests that do not accommodate level shifts. I consider two groups of Likelihood Ratio tests based on procedures suggested by Johansen (1988, 1995) and Saikkonen & Lütkepohl...

We introduce a new method for the estimation of discount functions, yield curves and forward curves from government issued coupon bonds. Our approach is non-parametric and does not assume particular functional form for the discount function although we do show how to impose various restrictions...

Let (x, z) be a pair of random vectors. We construct a new "smoothed" empirical likelihood based test for the hypothesis that E(z|x) a.s. = 0, and show that the test statistic is asymptotically normal under the null. An expression for the asymptotic power of this test under a sequence of local...