An Extended Macro-Finance Model with Financial Factors

This paper extends the benchmark Macro-Finance model by introducing, next to the standard macroeconomic factors, additional liquidity-related and return forecasting factors. Liquidity factors are obtained from a decomposition of the TED spread while the return-forecasting (risk premium) factor is extracted by imposing a single factor structure on excess holding returns. The model is estimated on US data using MCMC techniques. Two findings stand out. First, the model outperforms Macro-Finance benchmark models in fitting the yield curve. Second, financial shocks, either in the form of liquidity or risk premium shocks, have a statistically and economically significant impact on the yield curve.