The influence of heterogeneous time preferences on the term structure is investigated. Motivated by the Preferred Habitat Theory of Modigliani and Sutch, a model for intertemporal preferences accounting for preferred habitats is proposed. In a heterogeneous world, preferred habitats can explain...

This paper proposes linear higher order conditions on the term structure that allow to compute valuation bounds for any deterministic cash stream. Starting from bounds on the forward rate curve and its derivatives, which are nonlinear in the discount factors, we derive linear conditions that are...

The effect of incomplete information on the term structure of interest rates is examined in the framework of a pure exchange economy under uncertainty. When the growth rate of the aggregate endowment is known, the term structure is flat and deterministic. When agents do not observe the...

To assess the predictive content of the interest rate term spread for future economic growth, we distinguish short-run from long-run predictability by using two different approaches. First, following Dufour and Renault (1998) a test procedure is proposed to test for causality at different...

We provide a framework for the analysis of term structures of credit spreads on corporate bonds in the presence of informational asymmetries. While bond investors observe default incidents, we suppose that they have incomplete information on the firm's assets and/or the threshold asset level at...

We introduce a new method for the estimation of discount functions, yield curves and forward curves from government issued coupon bonds. Our approach is non-parametric and does not assume particular functional form for the discount function although we do show how to impose various restrictions...

We derive an asymptotic theory of nonparametric estimation for an nonlinear transfer function model Z(t) = f (Xt) + Wt where {Xt} and {Zt} are observed nonstationary processes and {Wt} is a stationary process. IN econometrics this can be interpreted as a nonlinear cointegration type...