This paper reveals that the class of affine term structure models introduced by Duffie and Kan (1996) is much larger than it has been usually considered in the literature. We study "fundamental" risk factors, which represent multivariate risk aversion of the consumer volatility matrix of the...

We identify local and global factors across international bond markets that arepoorly spanned by the traditional level, slope and curvature factors but havestrong forecasting power for future bond excess returns. Local and global fac-tors are jointly signicant predictors of bond returns, where...

The challenge of international term structure models is to simultaneously account for the properties of interest rate term structures and foreign exchange rates within an arbitrage-free framework. We extend the quadratic term structure models proposed in Leippold and Wu (2002) to multiple...

We study the optimal policies and mean-variance frontiers (MVF) of a multiperiod mean-variance optimization of assets and liabilities (AL). Our model allows for a contemporaneous optimization of the balance-sheet as a whole. This makes the analysis more challenging than in a setting based on...

This paper develops a new estimation procedure for characteristic-based factor models of security returns. We treat the factor model as a weighted additive nonparametric regression model, with the factor returns serving as time-varying weights, and a set of univariate non-parametric functions...

Under the assumption of normally distributed returns, we analyzewhether the Cumulative Prospect Theory of Tversky and Kahneman (1992)is consistent with the Capital Asset Pricing Model. We find that in everyfinancial market equilibrium the Security Market Line Theorem holds.However, under the...

Central bankers’ conventional wisdom suggests that nominal interest rates should be raised to implement a lower inflation target. In contrast, I show that the standard New Keynesian monetary model predicts that nominal interest rates should bedecreased to attain this goal. Real interest rates,...

We introduce a new analytical approach to price American options. Using an explicit and intuitive proxy for the exercise rule, we derive tractable pricing formulas using a short-maturity asymptotic expansion. Depending on model parameters, this method can accurately price options with...

The goal of this paper is to assess, for the first time, the empirical impact of "Kaynes' beauty contest", or "higher order belief", on asset price volatility. The paper shows that heterogeneous expectations induce higher order beliefs and that heterogeneous expectation asset pricing models...

This paper analyzes the effects that uncertainty about economic fundamentalshas on aggregate trading volume. First, the trading volume of an investor facinga standard consumption portfolio choice problem is derived. It is found that if theparameters describing the investment opportunity set...