We estimate the long rate and its volatility within the Svensson framework. The procedure that best extrapolates the longest observable rate and its volatility is a 2-dimensional grid search conditioned on the ridge regression suggested by Annaert et al. (2013).

Some years ago, Crack and Ledoit (1996) discovered a strikingly geometric structure when plotting US stock returns against themselves. Since this pattern, in which lines radiating from the origin pop up, resembles the navigating tool it was named “Compass Rose”. Although authors differ in...

Corporate bonds expose the investor to credit risk, which will be reflected in the credit spread. Based on the EMU Broad Market indices, we study the inter-temporal stability of the covariance and correlation matrices of credit spread changes. Within a multivariate framework, the Box and...

In this paper, we study the sensitivity of insurance companies’ stock returns with respect to expected and unexpected changes in the Federal funds target rate over the period 1988-2007. We confirm Bernanke and Kuttner (2005) that, as stocks in general, insurance stock returns are only...

The Nelson-Siegel and the Svensson models are widely used in practice for fitting the term structure of interest rates. However, due to their highly non-linear nature and the potential danger of multicollinearity, numerical difficulties in estimating these models hamper their implementation. In...

The Nelson-Siegel model is widely used in practice for fitting the term structure of interest rates. Due to the ease in linearizing the model, a grid search or an OLS approach using a fixed shape parameter are popular estimation procedures. The estimated parameters, however, have been reported...

Following the approach of Fama and Schwert (1977), we investigate the inflation hedging ability of stocks, gold and real estate for Vietnam and Thailand. We estimate the relationship between their returns and various inflation measures (actual inflation, expected inflation as well as unexpected...