We study fiscal behaviour and the sovereign yield curve in the U.S. and Germany in the period 1981:I-2009:IV. The latent factors, level, slope and curvature, obtained with the Kalman filter, are used in a VAR with macro and fiscal variables, controlling for financial stress conditions. In the...

This paper explores whether there are systematic patterns as to when members of the decision-making committees of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank communicate with the public, and under what circumstances such communication has the ability to move financial...

This paper investigates the link between the perceived inflation risks in macroeconomic forecasts and the inflation risk premia embodied in financial instruments. We first provide some stylized facts about the term structure of inflation compensation, inflation expectations and inflation risk...

This paper studies the effects of ECB communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the perceived sovereign risk of Italy over the last five years. More than fifty events concerning non-standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ECB...

This paper shows that the scope for bond yields to fall below zero is strictly limited by market expectations about how far below zero central banks are willing to set their short-term policy rates. If a central bank communicates a credible commitment to keeping its policy rate above a given...

This paper shows that changes in the tone of central bank communication have a significant effect on asset prices. Tone captures how the central bank frames economic fundamentals and its monetary policy. When tone becomes more positive, stock prices increase, whereas credit spreads and...

We quantify the importance of non-monetary news in central bank communication. Using evidence from four major central banks and a comprehensive classification of events, we decompose news conveyed by central banks into news about monetary policy, economic growth, and separately, shocks to risk...

To "ensure depth and liquidity," the European Central Bank intervened in sovereign debt markets through its Securities Markets Programme (SMP), providing a unique opportunity to estimate the effects of large-scale asset purchases on sovereign bond liquidity premia. From reduced-form estimates,...

We document a large return drift around monetary policy announcements by the Federal Open Market Committee. Stock returns start drifting up 25 days before expansionary monetary policy surprises, whereas they decrease before contractionary surprises. The cumulative return difference across...

In Africa, a number of countries like South Africa have adopted inflation targeting. In Nigeria, different monetary policy regimes have been adopted over the years with rather unsatisfactory success. This study examines inflation targeting in Nigeria and South Africa, using fully modified least...