The current environment is characterized by low real rates and by policy rates close to or at their effective lower bound in all major financial areas. We analyze these unusual economic conditions from a secular perspective using data on aggregate consumption, wealth and asset returns. Our...

The purpose of this note is to derive measures of ex ante long-term real interest rates that satisfy Fisher's notion of a long-run relationship between expectations of inflation and nominal interest rates. We do so by adopting a backward-looking approach that also takes account of the increasing...

Modeling nominal interest rates requires their effective lower bound (ELB) to be taken into account. We propose a flexible time series approach that includes a "shadow rate" - a notional rate identical to the actual nominal rate except when the ELB binds. We apply this approach to a trend-cycle...

We extend the basic (representative-household) New Keynesian [NK] model of the monetary transmission mechanism to allow for a spread between the interest rate available to savers and borrowers, that can vary for either exogenous or endogenous reasons. We find that the mere existence of a...

This paper investigates why the slope of the yield curve predicts future economic activity in Germany and the United States. A structural VAR is used to identify aggregate supply, aggregate demand, monetary policy and inflation scare shocks and to analyze their effects on the real, nominal and...

In emerging market economies, currency appreciation goes hand in hand with compressed sovereign bond spreads, even for local currency sovereign bonds. This yield compression comes from a reduction in the credit risk premium. Crucially, the relevant exchange rate involved in yield compression is...

We examine the informational content of TIPS yields from the viewpoint of a general 3-factor no-arbitrage term structure model of inflation and interest rates. Our empirical results indicate that TIPS yields contained a "liquidity premium" that was until recently quite large (~1%). Key features...

This paper reexamines the issue of unspanned stochastic volatility (USV) in bond markets and the puzzle of poor relative pricing between bonds and bond options. I make a distinction between the "weak USV" and the "strong USV" scenarios, and analyze the evidence for each of them. I argue that the...

We quantify the importance of non-monetary news in central bank communication. Using evidence from four major central banks and a comprehensive classification of events, we decompose news conveyed by central banks into news about monetary policy, economic growth, and separately, shocks to risk...

We study the feedback from the risk of outstanding mortgage-backed securities (MBS) on the level and volatility of interest rates. We incorporate the supply shocks resulting from changes in MBS duration into a parsimonious equilibrium dynamic term structure model and derive three predictions...