How do interest rates react to news? This paper presents a new methodology, based on a simple dynamic term structure model, which provides for an integrated analysis of the effects of monetary policy actions and macroeconomic news on the term structure of interest rates. I find several new...

Previous research has emphasized the portfolio balance effects of Federal Reserve bond purchases, in which a reduced bond supply lowers term premia. In contrast, we find that such purchases have important signaling effects that lower expected future short term interest rates. Our evidence comes...

Affine dynamic term structure models (DTSMs) are the standard finance representation of the yield curve. However, the literature on DTSMs has ignored the coefficient bias that plagues estimated autoregressive models of persistent time series. We introduce new simulation-based methods for...

How do monetary policy expectations and term premia respond to news? This paper provides new answers to this question by means of a dynamic term structure model (DTSM) in which risk prices are restricted. This leads to more precise and more reliable estimates of expectations and term premium...

Obtaining monetary policy expectations from the yield curve is difficult near the zero lower bound (ZLB). Standard dynamic term structure models, which ignore the ZLB, can be misleading. Shadow-rate models are better suited for this purpose, because they account for the distributional asymmetry...

We evaluate the importance of three different channels for explaining the recent performance of subprime mortgages. First, the riskiness of the subprime borrowing pool may have increased. Second, pockets of regional economic weakness may have helped push a larger proportion of subprime borrowers...

We develop two measures of exogenous oil-price shocks for the period 1984 to 2006 based on market commentaries on daily oil-price fluctuations. Our measures are based on exogenous events that trigger substantial fluctuations in spot oil prices and are constructed to be free of endogenous and...

Recent research suggests that there has been a decline in the extent to which firms “pass through” changes in exchange rates to prices. Beyond providing further evidence in support of this claim, this paper proposes an explanation for the phenomenon. It then presents empirical evidence of a...

In this paper, we conduct a dynamic panel analysis of the determinants of the household saving rate in China using a life cycle model and panel data on Chinese provinces for the 1995-2004 period from China's household survey. We find that China's household saving rate has been high and rising...

External debt increases the vulnerability of indebted emerging market economies to macroeconomic volatility and financial crises. Capital account reversals often lead sovereign debt repayment crises that are only resolved after prolonged and difficult debt restructuring. Foreign indebtedness...