The recent global financial crisis has led central banks to rely heavily on "unconventional" monetary policies. This alternative approach to policy has generated much discussion and a heated and at times confusing debate. The debate has been complicated by the use of different definitions and...

What are liquidity crises? And what can be done to address them? This short paper brings together some personal reflections on this issue, largely based on previous work. In the process, it questions a number of commonly held beliefs that have become part of the conventional wisdom. The paper is...

The paper presents a comprehensive data set of all bonds issued by the sixteenGerman states (Länder) since 1992. It thus provides a complete picture of acapital market comparable in size to funds raised in the German fixed incomemarket for corporations. The quantitative analysis reveals that...

We examine the informational content of TIPS yields from the viewpoint of a general 3-factor no-arbitrage term structure model of inflation and interest rates. Our empirical results indicate that TIPS yields contained a "liquidity premium" that was until recently quite large (~1%). Key features...

The challenge of international term structure models is to simultaneously account for the properties of interest rate term structures and foreign exchange rates within an arbitrage-free framework. We extend the quadratic term structure models proposed in Leippold and Wu (2002) to multiple...

We propose an affine term structure model which accommodates non-linearities in the drift and volatility function of the short-term interest rate. Such non-linearities are a consequence of discrete beta-distributed regime shifts constructed on multiple thresholds. We derive iterative closed form...

How do financial markets price new information? This paper analyzes price setting atthe intersection of private and public information, by testing whether and how thereaction of financial markets to public signals depends on the relative importance ofprivate information in agents’ information...

The 2007-2008 financial crises has made it painfully obvious that markets may quickly turn illiquid.Moreover, recent experience has shown that distress and lack of active trading can jump “around”between seemingly unconnected parts of the financial system contributing to transforming...

The unfolding financial turmoil in mature economies has prompted the official and private sectors to reconsider policies, business models and risk management practices. Regardless of its future evolution, it already threatens to become one of the defining economic moments of the 21st century....