We test whether the Nelson and Siegel (1987) yield curve model is arbitrage-free in a statistical sense. Theoretically, the Nelson-Siegel model does not ensure the absence of arbitrage opportunities, as shown by Bjork and Christensen (1999). Still, central banks and public wealth managers rely...

This paper analyzes the effect of the interest rate lower bound on long term sovereign bond spreads in the Euro area. We specify a joint shadow rate term structure model for the risk-free, the German and the Italian sovereign yield curves. In our model, the behavior of long term spreads becomes...

In this paper, we extract common factors from a cross-section of U.S. macro-variables and Treasury zero-coupon yields. We find that two macroeconomic factors have an important predictive content for government bond yields and excess returns. These factors are not spanned by the cross-section of...

We assess the effect of the QE2 program on the TIPS liquidity premium using a latent factor approach and a counterfactual exercise. In the context of a state-space model for nominal and TIPS yields, we identify the TIPS liquidity premium as the common component in TIPS yields that is unspanned...