This paper uses the credit-friction model developed by C´urdia and Woodford, in a series of papers, as the basis for attempting to mimic the behavior of credit spreads in moderate as well as in times of crisis. We are able to generate movements in representative credit spreads that are, at...

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across 18 advanced economies over the past 40 years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To address these...

We study how investor behaviour affects the transmission of ?financial crises. If investors exhibit decreasing relative risk aversion, then negative wealth shocks increase the risk premium required to hold risky assets. We integrate this into a second generation model of currency crises which...

There has been little evidence in the past to support the use of commodity-currency cross-hedges (Demaskey and Pearce, 1998; Benet, 1990; Eaker and Grant, 1987). However, this paper shows that if currencies can be defined as commodity currencies, as per Chen and Rogoff (2003) and Cashin, Ce´spedes and...

Yield curve models within the popular Nelson and Siegel (hereafter NS) class are shown to arise from a formal low-order Taylor approximation to the generic Gaussian affine term structure model. That theoretical foundation provides an assurance that NS models correspond to a well-accepted...

With nominal interest rates near the zero lower bound (ZLB) in many major economies, it has become untenable to apply Gaussian affine term structure models (GATSMs) while ignoring their inherent theoretical deficiency of non-zero probabilities of negative interest rates. In this article I...

I propose a simple framework that quantifies the stance of monetary policy as a “shadow short rate” when the term structure is near the zero lower bound. I demonstrate my framework with a one-factor model applied to Japanese data, including an intuitive economic interpretation of the...

When nominal interest rates are near their zero lower bound (ZLB), as in many developed economies at the time of writing, it is theoretically untenable to apply the popular class of Gaussian affine term structure models (GATSMs) given their inherent material probabilities of negative interest...

The Black framework offers a theoretically appealing way to model the term structure and gauge the stance of monetary policy when the zero lower bound of interest rates becomes constraining, but it is time consuming to apply using standard numerical methods. I outline a faster Monte Carlo...

With nominal interest rates currently at or near their zero lower bound (ZLB) in many major economies, it has become untenable to apply Gaussian affine term structure models (GATSMs) while ignoring their inherent non-zero probabilities of negative interest rates. In this article I modify GATSMs...