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 estimate a macro-finance yield curve model for both the nominal and real forward curve for the UK from 1993 to 2008. Our model is able to accommodate a number of key macroeconomic variables and allows us to estimate the instantaneous response of the yield curve and so gauge the impact of...

We estimate the ‘fundamental’ component of euro area sovereign bond yield spreads, i.e. the part of bond spreads that can be justified by country-specific economic factors, euro area economic fundamentals, and international influences. The yield spread decomposition is achieved using a...

We study fiscal behaviour and the sovereign yield curve in the US and Germany. We obtain the latent factors, level, slope and curvature, with the Kalman filter, and use them in a VAR with macro, fiscal and financial stress variables. In the US, fiscal shocks generate an immediate response of the...

After August 2007 the plumbing system that supplied banks with wholesale funding, the interbank market, failed because toxic assets obstructed the pipes. Banks were forced to squeeze liquidity in a “lemons market” or to ask for liquidity “on tap” from central banks. This paper...

Against the background of the current debate about fiscal sustainability in several advanced economies, this paper estimates determinants of G7 sovereign bond spreads, using high-frequency proxies for market expectations about macroeconomic fundamentals and allowing for time-varying parameters....

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...

The global financial crisis rapidly spread across borders and financial markets, and also distressed EU bond markets. The crisis did not hit all markets in the same way. We measure the strength and direction of linkages between 16 EU sovereign bond markets using a factor-augmented version of the...

Is there asymmetry in the distribution of government bond returns in developed countries? Can asymmetries be predicted using financial and macroeconomic variables? To answer the first question, we provide evidence for asymmetry in government bond returns in particular for short maturities. This...

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...