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...

In a world of interconnected financial markets it is plausible that risk appetite — an important factor in asset pricing — is determined globally. By constructing an estimate of variance risk premia (VRP) for UK, US and euro-area equity markets, we are able to estimate international variance...

We find empirical evidence that inflation, nominal, and real interest rates in the US are trend-stationary with a structural break in both the unconditional mean and the drift rate of a deterministic trend, which occurs shortly after the change in operating procedures of the Fed in September...

This note examines the stochastic properties of US term spreads with parametric and semi-parametric fractional integration techniques. Since the observed data (rather than the estimated residuals from a cointegrating regression) are used for the analysis, standard methods can be applied. The...

In this paper we present an empirically stable euro area money demand model. Using a sample period until 2009:2 shows that the current financial and economic crisis that started in 2007 does not appear to have any noticeable impact on the stability of the euro area money demand function. We also...

This paper investigates the impact of international shocks - interest rate, commodity price and industrial production shocks - on key macroeconomic variables in ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries by using near-VAR models and monthly data from the early 1990s to 2009. In contrast to...

This study analyses the impact of economic catching-up on annual inflation rates in the European Union with a special focus on the new member countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using an array of estimation methods, we show that the Balassa-Samuelson effect is not an important driver of...

In this paper we present an empirically stable euro area money demand model. Using a sample period until 2009:2 shows that the current financial and economic crisis that started in 2007 does not appear to have any noticeable impact on the stability of the euro area money demand function. We also...

We apply the asymmetric ARDL model advanced by Shin, Yu and Greenwood-Nimmo (2009) to the analysis of the patterns of pass-through from policy-controlled interest rates to a variety of longer-term rates in the U.S. and Germany. Our results reveal three main phenomena. Firstly, while the effect...

Deviations of policy interest rates from the levels implied by the Taylor rule have been persistent before the financial crisis and increased especially after the turn of the century. Compared to the Taylor benchmark, policy rates were often too low. This paper provides evidence that both...