This paper uses the flexible approach of Hamilton (2001) to investigate the nature of nonlinearities in the term structure. The paper reports clear evidence of nonlinearity, in contrast to the affine term structure model and consistent with recent claims in the literature. We find that there is...

This paper integrates two strands of studies on consumer demand and consumption and provides a unified framework for analyzing consumer behavior employing an intertemporal two-stage budgeting procedure. We take a modified AIDS framework for the demand system and derive a general Euler equation...

Most work showing the yield curve predicts future economic growth relies on post WWII data. We demonstrate that the yield curve has predictive content for most of the post Civil War period. This predictive ability, however, is closely related to the credibility of the monetary regime in place,...

If country and currency risk premiums are positively correlated, a negative international liquidity shock harms twice the economy, thereby substantially increasing interest rates. This harmful positive correlation between country and currency risk premiums observed in some countries is called...

Latin American economies are exposed to ubstantial external vulnerability. Domestic imbalances and terms of trade shocks are often exacerbated by sudden financial distress. In this paper we explore ways of overcoming external vulnerability drawing lessons from a detailed comparison of the...

This paper investigates the properties of optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a two sector small open economy. If the government can optimally select all possible distorting tax rates, then it can implement Pareto efficient outcomes and the Friedman Rule is found to be a necessary condition...

In this paper we incorporate the term structure of interest rates in a standard inflation forecast targeting framework. Learning about the transmission process of monetary policy is introduced by having heterogeneous agents - i.e. the central bank and private agents - who have different...

The paper applies methods of functional data analysis – functional auto-regression, principal components and canonical correlations – to the study of the dynamics of interest rate curve. In addition, it introduces a novel statistical tool based on the singular value decomposition...