This paper develops an affine model of the term structure of interest rates in which bond yields are driven by observable and unobservable macroeconomic factors. It imposes restrictions to identify the effects of monetary policy and other structural disturbances on output, inflation, and...

This paper studies the impact of credit rating agency (CRA) downgrade announcements on the value of the Euro and the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish long-term sovereign bonds during the culmination of the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011-2012. The employed GARCH models show that CRA...

We employ a nonlinear, nonparametric method to model the stochastic behavior of changes in several short and long term U.S. interest rates. We apply a nonlinear autoregression to the series using the locally weighted regression (LWR) estimation method, a nearest-neighbor method, and evaluate the...

The effect of financial liberalization on private saving is theoretically ambiguous, not only because the link between interest rate levels and saving is itself ambiguous, but also because financial liberalization is a multi-dimensional and phased process, sometimes involving reversals. Some...

This paper shows that the recent literature that tests for a long-run Fisher relationship using cointegration analysis is seriously flawed. Cointegration analysis assumes that the variables in question are I(1) or I(d) with the same d. Using monthly post-war U.S. data from 1959-1997, we show...

This paper compares six term structure estimation methods empirically in terms of zero and forward rate curves as well as ex ante price and yield prediction accuracy. Specifically, we use daily government bond quotations to generate true out-of-sample prediction errors based on the model's...

Excess returns earned in fixed-income markets have been modeled using the ARCH-M model of Engle et al. and its variants. We investigate whether the empirical evidence obtained from an ARCH-M type model is sensitive to the definition of the holding period (ranging from 5 days to 90 days) or to...

A number of previous studies have questioned the dominant role of Germany within the EMS. These conclusions are often based on empirical findings that interest rates of member countries of the EMS are not affected by German interest rates, even in the long run. In this study we establish...

We investigate the low frequency properties of three- and six- month rates for Eurocurrency deposits denominated in eight major currencies with specific emphasis on fractional dynamics. Using the fractional integration testing procedure suggested by Geweke and Porter-Hudak (1983), we find that...

This paper develops and tests a nonlinear general equilibrium model of the term structure of interest rates based on the framework of Cox, Ingersoll and Ross (CIR, 1985). The contributions of this paper to the literature are both theoretical and empirical. The theoretical advantages of the...