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...

Recent studies of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure (EHTS) find evidence in favor of the EHTS using post 1980s US data. This has been attributed to the relative macro stability of this period and greater market efficiency. Using a panel of forecasts for 3-month interest rates for...

This study tests for a break in the persistence of EMU government bond yield spreads examining data from France, Italy and Spain and using German interest rates as a kind of benchmark. The results reported here provide evidence for breaks between 2006 and 2008. The persistence of the yield...

This paper develops a macro-finance model of the Brazilian economy and its sovereign debt markets that allows for domestic and international macroeconomic influences as well as swings in investor confidence. It finds significant evidence of common trends in the US and Brazilian economies and...

The recent macro-finance literature does not agree either about the empirical properties of the expectation part and of the term premium on long-term bonds or about the importance or even the direction of the relationship between the term premium and future economic activity. This paper proposes...

We examine several alternative models of the UK gilt yield curve using daily data for the period 12 July 1996–10 February 2010. We select the best models according to two criteria: low out of sample errors in pricing bonds and low curvature of the implied forward rate curve function. We...