This paper tests the random walk hypothesis and weak form market efficiency in the VIX futures market using a variety of tests. A unit root in the aggregated market price series suggests that the VIX futures market is efficient. For the individual VIX futures price series, 51 of 54 futures...

With nominal interest rates currently at or near their zero lower bound (ZLB) in many major economies, it has become untenable to apply Gaussian affine term structure models (GATSMs) while ignoring their inherent non-zero probabilities of negative interest rates. In this article I modify GATSMs...

I propose a simple framework that quantifies the stance of monetary policy as a 'shadow short rate' when the term structure is near the zero lower bound. I demonstrate my framework with a one-factor model applied to Japanese data, including an intuitive economic interpretation of the results,...

Counter to the comments in Wu and Xia (2016), I show that the results from macroeconomic models are sensitive to the Shadow Short Rate (SSR) series used. That is, using a standard small macroeconomic vector autorregression model with a range of estimated SSR series obtains counterfactuals for...

Previous literature on price discovery in commodity markets is mainly focused on the question of whether the spot or the futures market dominates the price discovery process. Little attention, however, has been paid to the question of how the price discovery process is affected by futures...

Shadow Short Rates (SSRs) estimated from shadow/lower-bound term structure models (SLMs) can be useful for monitoring of the stance of unconventional monetary policy and for quantitative analysis, but only if they are relatively robust. I show from several perspectives that SSRs from...

Chinese futures markets for agricultural commodities are among the fastest growing futures markets in the world and trading behaviour in those markets is perceived as highly speculative. Therefore, we empirically investigate whether speculative activity in Chinese futures markets for...

The Black framework offers a theoretically appealing way to model the term structure and gauge the stance of monetary policy when the zero lower bound of interest rates becomes constraining, but it is time consuming to apply using standard numerical methods. I outline a faster Monte Carlo...

When nominal interest rates are near their zero lower bound (ZLB), as in many developed economies at the time of writing, it is theoretically untenable to apply the popular class of Gaussian affine term structure models (GATSMs) given their inherent material probabilities of negative interest...

We propose a methodology for producing forecast densities for economic aggregates based on disaggregate evidence. Our ensemble predictive methodology utilizes a linear mixture of experts framework to combine the forecast densities from potentially many component models. Each component represents...