This chapter reviews some of the academic literature that links nominal and real term structures with the macroeconomy. The main conclusion is that none of our models is consistent with basic properties of nominal yields. It is difficult to explain the average shape of the nominal yield curve,...

This paper investigates the ability of the Federal Reserve to manipulate the overnight rate without open market operations (which Demiralp and Jorda (2000) term the announcement effect), using high-frequency, open-market-desk data. Using similar data, Hamilton (1997) takes advantage of forecast...

Credit risk models should reflect the observation that the relevant value of collateral is generally not the average value of the asset over all possible states of nature. In most cases, the relevant value of collateral for the lender is its secondary market value in bad states of nature, where...

We explore the term structures of claims to a variety of cash flows: U.S. government bonds (claims to dollars), foreign government bonds (claims to foreign currency), inflation-adjusted bonds (claims to the price index), and equity (claims to future equity indexes or dividends). Average term...

Despite powerful advances in yield curve modeling in the last twenty years, comparatively little attention has been paid to the key practical problem of forecasting the yield curve. In this paper we do so. We use neither the no-arbitrage approach, which focuses on accurately fitting the cross...