This paper proposes the use of the two-factor term-structure model of Longstaff and Schwartz (1992a, LS) to estimate the risk-neutral density (RND) of the future short-term interest rate. The resulting RND can be interpreted as the market's estimate of the density of the future short-term...

The rank of the Hankel matrix, corresponding to a system transfer function, is equal to the order of its minimal state space realization. The computation of the rank of the Hankel matrix is complicated by the fact that its block elements are rarely given exactly but are estimated instead. In...

The rank of the spectral density matrix conveys relevant information in a variety of modelling scenarios. Phillips (1986) showed that a necessary condition for cointegration is that the spectral density matrix of the innovation sequence at frequency zero is of a reduced rank. In a recent paper...

This paper addresses the issue of measuring the NAIRU for the euro area and assessing the robustness and precision of the obtained estimates. The empirical framework adopted is based on systems combining an Okun-type relationship between cyclical unemployment and the output gap with a Phillips...

Conditional heteroskedasticity is an important feature of many macroeconomic and financial time series. Standard residual-based bootstrap procedures for dynamic regression models treat the regression eroor as i.i.d. These procedures are invalid in the presence of conditional heteroskedasticity....

This paper investigates whether output and inflation respond asymmetrically to credit shocks in the euro area. The methodology, based on a non-linear VAR system, follows work by Balke (2000) for the US. The results reveal evidence of threshold effects related to credit conditions in the economy....

This paper develops a new methodology for simulating fixed-income return distributions. It is shown that a traditional factor risk model, when augmented with reference returns, is capable of generating visually consistent return distributions for a broad range of fixed income instruments such as...

The paper considers a Bayesian approach to the cointegrated VAR model with a uniform prior on the cointegration space. Building on earlier work by Villani (2005b), where the posterior probability of the cointegration rank can be calculated conditional on the lag order, the current paper also...

We estimate the approximate nonlinear solution of a small DSGE model on euro area data, using the conditional particle filter to compute the model likelihood. Our results are consistent with previous findings, based on simulated data, suggesting that this approach delivers sharper inference...