In order to derive closed-form expressions of the prices of credit derivatives, standard credit-risk models typically price the default intensities, but not the default events themselves. The default indicator is replaced by an appropriate prediction and the prediction error, that is the...

We define a disastrous default as the default of a systemic entity. Such an event is expected to have a negative effect on the economy and to be contagious. Bringing macroeconomic structure to a noarbitrage asset-pricing framework, we exploit prices of disaster-exposed assets (credit and equity...

This paper develops an arbitrage-free affine term structure model of potentially defaultable sovereign bonds to model a cross-section of eight euro area government bond yield curves since January 1999. The existence of a common monetary policy under European Monetary Union determines the short...

We estimate the reaction function of monetary policy in the Euro area and derive the Taylor-type policy rule that a would-be ECB would have followed since the beginning of the European Monetary System (1979-2003). We first follow the standard GMM methodology developed by Clarida, Galí and...

We compute optimized monetary policy rules for the ECB when the euro area economy is described by a small empirical macroeconomic model with a time-varying natural interest rate which is positively correlated with fluctuations in trend output growth. We investigate the consequences of both...