This paper estimates expected future real interest rates and inflation rates from observed prices of UK government nominal and index-linked bonds. The estimation method takes account of imperfections in the indexation of UK index-linked bonds. It assumes that expected log returns on all bonds...

Government issue of bonds indexed to the price level has long been recommended by economists, to no observed effect. Recently skepticism has been expressed about the real effects of such government action, or indeed of any government financial intermediation. This paper examines two main...

This paper develops a simple theory of the supply of index bonds by a firm, and uses that model to examine in some detail possible reasons for the non-existence of privately issued index bonds in the United States. The major elements of the theory involve the trade-off between the tax advantages...

We explore four issues concerning annuitization options that retirees might use in the decumulation phase of an individual accounts' retirement saving system. First, we investigate the operation of both real and nominal annuity individual annuity markets in the United Kingdom. The widespread...

The recent introduction of CPI-linked bonds by several financial institutions is a milestone in the history of the U.S. financial system. It has potentially far-reaching effects on individual and institutional asset allocation decisions because these securities represent the only true long-run...

This paper derives a structural relationship between the nominal exchange rate, national price levels, and observed yields on long maturity inflation - indexed bonds. This relationship can be interpreted as defining the fair value of the exchange rate that will prevail in any model or real world...

This paper explores the history of inflation-indexed bond markets in the US and the UK. It documents a massive decline in long-term real interest rates from the 1990's until 2008, followed by a sudden spike in these rates during the financial crisis of 2008. Breakeven inflation rates, calculated...

A common approach to measuring price changes is to look at the change of the expenditure needed to purchase a fixed basket of goods. It is well-known that this approach suffers from problems and creates several biases in the measurement of price changes faced by consumers. Substitution and...

We show how to recover the money-metric utility function, which converts income at one point in time into equivalent income at another point in time, using repeated cross-sectional household data. Our procedure allows unrestricted preferences, but requires that households' preferences be the...

Although it has been well established that financial volatility is related to news and macroeconomic shocks, there has been less emphasis on the importance of underlying economic and political stability. In this paper we study the behavior of consol returns since 1729 and identify a...