We model the term structure of interest rates as resulting from the interaction between investor clienteles with preferences for specific maturities and risk-averse arbitrageurs. Because arbitrageurs are risk averse, shocks to clienteles' demand for bonds affect the term structure --- and...

This paper argues that the Fed was not stock market bubble-neutral during the last several years. This nonneutrality implies two options: first, the Fed has used monetary policies to prevent the building of the stock market bubble or, second, the Fed has contributed to its development and...

This paper continues the work started by Bolder and Streacute;liski (1999) and considers two alternative classes of models for extracting zero-coupon and forward rates from a set of observed Government of Canada bond and treasury-bill prices. The first class of term-structure estimation methods...

Zero-coupon interest rates are the fundamental building block of fixed-income mathematics, and as such have an extensive number of applications in both finance and economics. The risk-free government zero-coupon term structure is, however, not directly observable and needs to be generated from...

The primary objective of this paper is to compare a variety of joint models of the term structure of interest rates and the macroeconomy. To this end, we consider six alternative approaches. Three of these models follow from the work of Diebold and Li (2003) with a generalization in Bolder...

This paper tests the expectations hypothesis (EH) with the data used in Campbell and Shiller's (1991) seminal work on the EH using a Lagrange multiplier test developed recently by Bekaert and Hodrick (2001). This test is applied under the assumption that interest rates are integrated of order...

In this paper we investigate the stock market response to international monetary policy changes in the UK and Germany. Specifically, we analyse the impact of (un)expected changes in UK and German/Euro area policy rates on UK and German aggregate and sectoral equity returns in an event study. The...

This paper estimates the determinants of households' choice between fixed rate (FRM) and adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) contracts, using the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Contrary to the predictions of the theoretical literature, the analysis shows that most household...

Due to economic feedback the actual risk in bonds from changes in Federal Reserve policy should generally be smaller than measured using conventional duration measures. We introduce the notion of Federal Reserve policy durations. For example, target inflation duration, which measures the change...