We advocate the use of excess returns rather than yields or log prices in analysing the risk neutral dynamics of the term structure. We show that under standard assumptions, excess returns are affine in the risk neutral innovations in the factors. This framework has several important advantages....

Linear estimators of the affine term structure model are inconsistent since they cannot reproduce the factors used in estimation. This is a serious handicap empirically, giving a worse fit than the conventional MLE estimator that ensures consistency. We show that a simple self-consistent...

The classic 'logistic' model has provided a realistic model of the behaviour of Covid-19 in China and many East Asian countries. Once these countries passed the peak, the daily case count fell back, mirroring its initial climb in a symmetric way, just as the classic model predicts. However, in...

We adapt the Meiselman (1962) OLS forward rate revision framework to obtain the discrete time analogue of the Heath, Jarrow and Morton (1992) specification and use it for estimating and testing term structure models. Our framework is based upon the Wold representation of the factor dynamics and...