Most time series models used in econometrics and empirical finance are estimated withmaximum likelihood methods, in particular when interest centers on density and Value{at{Risk (VaR) prediction. The standard maximum likelihood principle implicitly placesequal weight on each of the observations...

We propose an empirical approach to determine the various economic sourcesdriving the US yield curve. We allow the conditional dynamics of the yield at differ-ent maturities to change in reaction to past information coming from several relevantpredictor variables. We consider both endogenous,...