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...

Both, from a macroeconomic modeling perspective, as well as for a policy point of view, there has recently been a renewed interest in the cyclical and long-run comovement of interest rates. In this paper we re-investigate the long- and short-run comovements in the G7-countries by conducting...

We use a dynamic multipath general-to-specific algorithm to capture structural instability in the link between euro area sovereign bond yield spreads against Germany and their underlying determinants over the period January 1999 – August 2011. We offer new evidence suggesting a significant...

Although the federal funds rate started rising from mid-2004 US long term rates continued to fall. A likely contributory factor to this ‘conundrum’ was the contemporaneous increase in US bond demand. Using ARDL based models, which accommodate structural breaks, this paper estimates the...

The model proposed by Nelson and Siegel (1987) has been used for several researcher to fit the yield curve. In this paper we propose a discrete-time version of that model by using dynamic factors, such that the model is dynamic in the sense proposed by Diebold and Li (2006). We found the exact...

This study carries out an examination of the potential non-linear cointegration between the lending and deposit rates of eight Eastern European countries using the non-parametric rank tests proposed by Breitung (2001). Based upon our adoption in this study of the threshold error-correction model...

We provide a new asymptotic analysis of model selection procedure that compares likelihoods of two candidate diffusion models. Our asymptotic analysis relies on two dimensional asymptotic expansions with shrinking sampling interval Δ and increasing sampling span T, and clarifies the different...

This article provides theoretical foundations for the popular orthonormalised Laguerre polynomial (OLP) model of the yield curve, as originally introduced by Nelson and Siegel (1987). Intertemporal consistency is provided by deriving the volatility-adjusted OLP (VAO) model of the yield curve...

This article derives a generic, intertemporally-consistent, and arbitrage-free version of the popular class of yield curve models originally introduced by Nelson and Siegel (1987). The derived model has a theoretical foundation (conferred via the Heath, Jarrow and Morton (1992) framework) that...

Monthly interest rate forecasts from nearly 50 major financial institutions are used to examine the expectations hypothesis at the short end of the term structure for the Canadian T-bill market and Libor markets in the US, UK, and Switzerland. Using CVARs, the term premium is found to move...