We empirically investigate whether the relationship between interest rates and public deficits/debt may be nonlinear for the U.S. Using threshold estimation, we find evidence of level-dependent effects on interest rates, implying a significant effect of projected deficits and debt in the U.S....

Obtaining reliable estimates of the volatility of interest rates and exchange rates is a necessary condition to evaluate issues related to monetary independence and fear of floating. In this paper we use methods which explicitly account for structural breaks in the volatility dynamics in order...