A price barrier is a price level at which a large number of investors either buy or sell securities. We analyze the dynamics of asset prices in an economy in which price barriers exist. Our analysis suggests that asset prices and volatility can exhibit jumps when the price barrier is reached....

We find that in 1989-1996, when U.S. monetary policy tightly targeted overnight fed funds rates, the volatility and persistence of spreads between target and term fed funds levels were larger for longer-maturity loans. We show that such patterns are consistent with an expectational model where...

We assume the short-term rate to revert towards a central tendency which in, turn, is stochastically changing over time. We impose minimal restrictions on the joint behavior of the short-term rate and the central-tendency factor, and derive implications for the term structure of interest rates....

We assume that the instantaneous riskless rate reverts towards a central tendency which, in turn, is changing stochastically over time, and we derive a model of the term structure of interest rates. Our term-structure model implies that a linear combination of any two rates can be used as a...

We assume that the instantaneous riskless rate reverts toward a central tendency which, in turn, is changing stochastically over time. As a result, current short-term rates are not sufficient to predict future short-term rates movements, as it would be the case if the central tendency was...

Perhaps the most puzzling feature of currency prices is the tendency for high interest rate currencies to appreciate when the expectations hypothesis suggests the reverse. Some have attributed this forward premium anomaly to a time-varying risk premium but theory has been largely unsuccessful in...

A variety of realistic economic considerations make jump- diffusion models of interest rate dynamics an appealing modeling choice to price interest rate contingent claims. However, exact closed form solutions for bond prices when interest rates follow a mixed jump-diffusion process have proved...

In this paper we describe the cumulative distribution function of excess returns conditional on a broad set of predictors that summarize the state of the economy. We do so by estimating a sequence of conditional logit models over a grid of values of the response variable. Our method uncovers...

We model an economy where stocks and bonds (consols) are traded by two types of agents: speculators, expected utility maximizers always present in the market, and infrequent traders, whose trading motives are not explicitly modeled. A solution technique for equilibrium prices is developed when...

This paper studies the effects on financial markets of an anticipated fiscal stabilization policy in a stochastic environment. Stabilization is defined as a discrete change in the budget process which is implemented when government consumption reaches some threshold level, known by economic...