We systematically examine the comparative predictive performance of a number of alternativelinear and non-linear models for stock and bond returns in the G7 countries. Besides Markovswitching, threshold autoregressive (TAR), and smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) regimeswitching...

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,...

A central role for economic policy involves understanding and reducing the impact of unexpected,extreme events. In this paper, we develop a simple economic framework with latentregime switches. This framework explains why investors and policymakers can decide not tohedge against extreme events,...

By allowing for imperfectly informed markets and the role of private information, we offer newinsights about observed deviations of portfolio concentrations in domestic relative to foreignrisky assets, or “home bias”, from what standard finance models predict. Our model ascribesthe...

Several authors have shown that there exists a significant relationship between the term structure of interest rates and future changes in the rate of inflation. More recently, this relationship has been strengthened through the introduction of nonlinearities and regime shifts. This paper...

In this paper we adopt a principal components analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the term structure and employ autoregressive models (AR) to forecast principal components which, in turn, are used to forecast swap rates. Arguing in favor of structural variation, we propose data...

This paper addresses the question of the British state of convergence towards the Euro area, compared to the USA. Economically, the analysis is based on dependences in the money and capital markets, namely the uncovered interest parity (UIP) and the expectation hypothesis of the term structure...

We shed new light on the negative relationship between real stock returns or real interest rates and (i) ex post inflation, (ii) expected inflation, (iii) unexpected inflation and (iv) changes in expected inflation. Using the structural vector autoregression methodology, we propose a...

This paper extends the literature on the information content of financial variables with respect to future economic growth. It shows that variables originating from both the equity market and the bond market in Switzerland are useful indicators for forecasting the Swiss business cycle. In...

Entgegen früherer Studien, die darauf hinweisen, dass der gesamte Credit Spread eines Bonds durchdas mit diesem Bond verbundene Kreditrisiko induziert ist, zeigen neuere empirische Untersuchungen,dass neben Kreditrisiken noch weitere Faktoren die Höhe des Credit Spreads determinieren.Die...