We study the determinants of sovereign bond spreads in the euro area since the introduction of the euro. We show that an aggregate risk factor is a main driver of spreads. This factor also plays an important indirect role for risk spreads through its interaction with the size and structure of...

During the 15 years prior to the global financial crisis the volume of securitized assets transacted in the US grew substantially, reflecting a change in the nature of the financial intermediation process. Together with increased securitization of assets, financial entities, who participate more...

We examine time varying integration of developed (DM) and emerging (EM) market government bonds. Although we find an upward trend for most countries and maturity bands, we do observe reversals and negative trends among both DMs and EMs and for some maturities during the financial crisis. We...

This research investigates the macro factors for forecasting (1) bond risk premia and (2) term structure of government bond yields by using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) based on empirical prior. Different from the traditional variable selection approach which advocates finding an...

In this paper, we propose a model of the joint dynamics of euro-area sovereign yield curves. The arbitrage-free valuation framework involves five factors and two regimes, one of the latter being interpreted as a crisis regime. These common factors and regimes explain most of the fluctuations in...

This paper quantifies liquidity and credit premia in German and French government bond yields. For this purpose, we estimate term structures of government-guaranteed agency bonds and exploit the fact that any difference in their yields vis-`a-vis government bonds can be attributed to differences...

This paper estimates the impact of the Federal Reserve's 2008-2011 quantitative easing (QE) program on the U.S. term structure of interest rates. Different from other studies, we estimate an arbitrage-free term structure model that explicitly includes the quantity impact of the Fed's trades on...

Volatility in Italian sovereign spreads has increased since mid-2011. This paper finds that news on the euro area debt crisis and country specific events were important drivers of sovereign spreads. Movements in sovereign spreads affect CDS spreads and bond yields of Italian banks, and are...

This paper addresses the following questions. Is there evidence of financial contagion in the Eurozone? To what extent a country's vulnerability to contagion depends on "fundamentals" as opposed the government's "credibility"? We look at the empirical evidence on European sovereigns CDS spreads...

This paper has two parts. The first part will explore and document discrete time affine term structure models in a similar setup as seen in the celebrated papers from Backus, Foresi, Telmer (1998 and 1996) and Backus, Telmer and Wu (1999). However, the paper will concentrate on the multifactor...