What is the source of interest rate volatility? Why do low interest rates precede business cycle booms? Most observers tend to assume that monetary policy is largely responsible for it. Indeed, a standard real business cycle model delivers rather small fluctuations in real interest rates. Here,...

This paper evaluates the properties of nominal interest rates as indicators of inflation expectations. Are they unbiased? How precise are they? To arrive at robust results, a range of different methods are applied on several S and UK data sets. The results show that the interest rate level is a...

This paper explores the history of inflation-indexed bond markets in the US and the UK. It documents a massive decline in long-term real interest rates from the 1990's until 2008, followed by a sudden spike in these rates during the financial crisis of 2008. Breakeven inflation rates, calculated...

TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities), or the real yield, are directly and inversely impacted by Fed Asset levels to the degree they depart from real GDP growth (the excess of monetary capital thus created reduces the real yield obtainable since it outpaces real GDP growth which is the...

One of the most overlooked and least analyzed elements of Mises' economic theory is his concept of originary interest. This is distinct from the theory of the natural rate of interest proposed by Wicksell and developed by subsequent economists. The latter concept is determined endogenously by...

There are two optimality conditions in the M & P model of 1985. If the constant relative risk aversion is unity (log utility consumption), then correcting for risk-free rates that are “too low” will not prevent the equity optimality condition from seeming “too high” for observable...

The Keynesian intuition that increasing consumption can stimulate investment is verified empirically using US macroeconomic data. The investment multiplier is hypothesized to increase monotonically with the propensity to consume. However, the functional relationship is not that of the Keynesian...

Most papers explaining the macro causes of the U.S. Great Recession focus on the behavior of the middle class: how its saving rate declined in the pre-crisis years, then surged following the crisis. This paper argues that the saving rate of the rich followed a similar pattern, the result of...

Using Gretl, I apply ARMA, Vector ARMA, VAR, state-space model with a Kalman filter, transfer-function and intervention models, unit root tests, cointegration test, volatility models (ARCH, GARCH, ARCH-M, GARCH-M, Taylor-Schwert GARCH, GJR, TARCH, NARCH, APARCH, EGARCH) to analyze quarterly time...