Over the last few decades, real interest rates have trended downward in many countries. The most common explanation is that this reflects depressed demand due to demographic, technological and other real factors such as income inequality. In this paper we explore the claim that these trends may...

We generalize the long-run risks (LRR) model in Bansal and Yaron (2004) by incorporating the recursive smooth ambiguity aversion preferences of Klibanoff, Marinacci, and Mukerji (2005, 2009) and time-varying ambiguity. Relative to the Bansal-Yaron model, the generalized LRR model remains...

A representative consumer uses Bayes' law to learn about parameters of several models and to construct probabilities with which to perform ongoing model averaging. The arrival of signals induces the consumer to alter his posterior distribution over models and parameters. The consumer's...

A consensus has recently emerged that a number of variables in addition to the level, slope, and curvature of the term structure can help predict interest rates and excess bond returns. We demonstrate that the statistical tests that have been used to support this conclusion are subject to very...

A consensus has recently emerged that variables beyond the level, slope, and curvature of the yield curve can help predict bond returns. This paper shows that the statistical tests underlying this evidence are subject to serious small-sample distortions. We propose more robust tests, including a...

A consensus has recently emerged that a number of variables in addition to the level, slope, and curvature of the term structure can help predict interest rates and excess bond returns. We demonstrate that the statistical tests that have been used to support this conclusion are subject to very...

This paper examines the preferred-habitat theory under time-varying risk aversion. The predicted positive relation between the term spread and relative supply of longer-term debt is stronger when risk aversion is high. To capture this effect, a time-varying coefficient model is introduced and...