Estimates of the real term structure for the euro area implied by French index-linked bonds are obtained by means of a smoothing spline methodology. The real term structure allows computation of the constant-maturity inflation compensation, which is compared with the surveyed inflation...

A striking feature of financial market behaviour in recent years has been the low level of price volatility over a wide range of financial assets and markets. The issue has attracted the attention of central bankers and financial regulators due to the potential implications for financial...

When the riskiness of an asset increases, then, arguably, some risk-averse agents that were previously willing to hold on to the asset are no longer willing to do so. Aumann and Serrano (2008) have recently proposed an index of riskiness that helps to make this intuition rigorous. We use their...

This paper presents a unified framework to highlight possible channels for the international transmission of financial shocks. We first review the different definitions and measures of contagion used in the literature. We then use a simple multi-country asset pricing model to cast the main...

This paper discusses the limitations of the price-income ratio, the price-rent ratio, and of affordability measures as indicators of housing market conditions. For the purpose of assessing whether house prices are misaligned, the most sensible approach is to calculate the user cost of ownership...

Extreme value theory is concerned with the study of the asymptotical distribution of extreme events, that is to say events which are rare in frequency and huge with respect to the majority of observations. Statistical methods derived from this theory have been increasingly employed in finance,...

The ratio between current earnings per share and share price (the EP ratio) is widely considered to be an effective gauge of under/over-valuation of a corporation�s stock. Arguably, a more reliable indicator (the cyclically-adjusted EP ratio) can be obtained by replacing current earnings...

This paper presents a general test of contagion in financial markets based on bivariate correlation analysis � a test that can be interpreted as an extension of the normal correlation theorem. Contagion is defined as a structural break in the data generating process of rates of return....

From a financial standpoint, the mechanics of the carry trade has been recently examined in Brunnermeier et al. (2009). They showed that shocks to interest rate differentials lead to carry trade activity and to significant reactions in the bilateral exchange rates vis-a-vis the US dollar that...

This paper investigates the relationship between futures prices and financial investments in derivatives of the main agricultural commodities. We first provide a broad picture of how these markets function and how they have evolved, showing that traders who deal mostly in commodity index...