Bond excess returns can be predicted by macro factors, however, large parts remain still unexplained. We apply a novel term structure model to decompose bond excess returns into expected excess returns (risk premia) and the unexpected part. In order to explore these risk premia and innovations,...

Institutional funds have concentrated ownership by a few institutional investors, infrequent outflows and essentially no leverage. Yet using unique granular data on the bond holdings of institutional funds, we show that their trading behavior is strongly procyclical: they actively move into...

Using unique data of a survey among small and medium-sized German banks, we analyze various aspects of risk management over a short-term and medium-term horizon. We especially analyze the effect of a 200-bp increase in the interest level. We find that, in the first year, the impairments of...

Understanding the impact of changing interest rates onto banks' net interest margin is of central importance for various stakeholders. The primary focus lies often on changes in the interest level. However, changes in the steepness are a second driver which also significantly impacts banks'...

This paper explores the extent to which interest risk exposure is priced in bank margins. Our contribution to the literature is twofold: First, we present an extended model of Ho and Saunders (1981) that explicitly captures interest rate risk and returns from maturity transformation. Banks price...