Many continuous time term structure of interest rate models assume a factor structure where the drift and volatility functions are affine functions of the state variable process. These models involve very specific parametric choices of factors and functional specifications of the drift and...

Understanding the dynamics of interest rates and the term structure has important implications for issues as diverse as real economic activity, monetary policy, pricing of interest rate derivative securities and public debt financing. Our paper follows a longstanding tradition of using factor...

Most empirical studies on liquidity constraints classify a consumer as being constrained on the basis of a single indicator such as the asset to income ratio. In this analysis, we model the probability that a consumer faces liquidity constraints as a function of multiple social and economic...

This study considers the time series behavior of the U.S. real interest rate from 1961 to 1986. We provide a statistical characterization of the series using the methodology of Hamilton (1989), by allowing three possible regimes affecting both the mean and variance of the series. The results...