A 'lost decade' for the Eurozone is looming on the horizon. Under these circumstances, stable indicators for future economic activity are especially valuable to decision makers. This paper examines the predictive power of the yield spread, one of the most reliable indicators for gross domestic...

An OLS and probit framework is used to examine the predictive power of yield spreads with respect to GDP growth and recessions in the Eurozone from the 1990s to the recent past. Credit default swap (CDS) data on sovereign bonds, which provide a direct measure of default risk, are employed as...

The main goal of this paper is to examine the relationship between macroeconomic shocks and yield curve movements in Hungary. To this end, we apply a Nelson-Siegel type dynamic yield curve model, where changes of the yield curve are driven by two latent factors and some key macro variables that...

We use a macro-finance model, incorporating macroeconomic and financial factors, to study the term premium in the U.S. bond market. Estimating the model using Bayesian techniques, we find that a single factor explains most of the variation in bond risk premiums. Furthermore, the model-implied...

We model Greek monetary policy in the 1990s and use our findings to address two interrelated questions. First, how was monetary policy conducted in the 1990s so that the hitherto highest-inflation EU country managed to join the euro by 2001? Second, how compatible is the current ECB monetary...

Empirical evidence on the expectations hypothesis of the term structure is in-conclusive and its validity widely debated. Using a cointegrated VAR model of US treasury yields, this paper extends a common approach to test the theory. If, as we find, spreads between two yields are non-stationary,...

Empirical evidence on the expectations hypothesis of the term structure is in-conclusive and its validity widely debated. Using a cointegrated VAR model of US treasury yields, this paper extends a common approach to test the theory. If, as we find, spreads between two yields are non-stationary,...

This paper studies how inflation as a macroeconomic indicator affects nominal bond prices. I consider an economy with a representative agent with Epstein-Zin preferences. Regime switching affects the state-space capturing inêation and consumption growth. Thus, the agent is concerned about the...

This paper suggests a term structure model which parsimoniously exploits a broad macroeconomic information set. The model does not incorporate latent yield curve factors, but instead uses the common components of a large number of macroeconomic variables and the short rate as explanatory...

This paper analyzes European financial markets' comprehension and interpretation of ECB communication signals. By applying a novel indicator developed by Berger et al. (2006), that quantifies the contents of the ECB's introductory statements, we find that communication affects the term structure...