We assess whether the euro had an impact first on the degree of integration of European financial markets, and, second, on the euro area term structure. We propose two methodologies to measure integration: one relies on time-varying GARCH correlations, and the other one on a regression...

This paper explores whether there are systematic patterns as to when members of the decision-making committees of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank communicate with the public, and under what circumstances such communication has the ability to move financial...

This paper attempts to extract market expectations about the Japanese economy and the BOJ's policy stance from the yen yield curves augmented by money market interest rates, during the period from the end of the quantitative easing policy in March 2006. We use (i) the swap yield curves augmented...

We investigate the risk of holding credit default swaps (CDS) in the trading book and compare the Value at Risk (VaR) of a CDS position to the VaR for investing in the respective firm's equity using a sample of CDS - stock price pairs for 86 actively traded firms over the period from March 2003...

This paper applies regression analysis to investigate the fundamental factors of the variation of CDS index tranches. The sample comprises daily data on the tranche premia of the European iTraxx and North American CDX index from the start of the market in summer 2004 to January 2008. I estimate...

We undertake a variance decomposition of index-linked bond returns for the US, the UK and Iceland. In all cases, news about future excess returns is the key driver though only for Icelandic bonds are returns independent of inflation.

This paper compares the forecast precision of the Functional Signal plus Noise (FSN), the Dynamic Nelson–Siegel (DL), and a random walk model. The empirical results suggest that both outperform the random walk at short horizons (one-month) and that the FSN model outperforms the DL at the one-...

With interest rates near the zero lower bound, I propose a simple framework to indicate the monetary policy stance as a “shadow short rate”. I apply a one-factor model to Japan, provide associated economic intuition, and discuss multiple-factor extensions.

It is well documented that past winning stocks continue to outperform past losing stocks in numerous equity markets. However, existing Australian evidence on the momentum effect is contradictory and limited, partly due to differences in empirical designs, sample periods and stock populations. We...

This paper focuses on risk premiums paid by central governments in Europe and sub-national governments in Germany, Spain, and Canada. With regard to the European governments, we are interested in how these premiums were affected by the introduction of the euro. Using data for bond yield spreads...