A characteristic feature of U.S. monetary policy has been the active targeting of the overnight fed funds rate by the Federal Reserve. We show that during the 1989-1996 period, in spite of the effective targeting of the overnight fed funds rate, term fed funds rates displayed volatile and...

In one-factor models, such as Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross (1985) or Vasicek (1977), the conditional mean of the instantaneous rate changes with its current level. This paper gathers evidence that the conditional mean of the one- month rate explains variations in bond yields of different maturities,...

We assume the short-term rate to revert towards a central tendency which in, turn, is stochastically changing over time. We impose minimal restrictions on the joint behavior of the short-term rate and the central-tendency factor, and derive implications for the term structure of interest rates....

We assume that the instantaneous riskless rate reverts towards a central tendency which, in turn, is changing stochastically over time, and we derive a model of the term structure of interest rates. Our term-structure model implies that a linear combination of any two rates can be used as a...

We assume that the instantaneous riskless rate reverts toward a central tendency which, in turn, is changing stochastically over time. As a result, current short-term rates are not sufficient to predict future short-term rates movements, as it would be the case if the central tendency was...

In this paper we describe the cumulative distribution function of excess returns conditional on a broad set of predictors that summarize the state of the economy. We do so by estimating a sequence of conditional logit models over a grid of values of the response variable. Our method uncovers...

We explore the link between the overnight fed funds rate, which is actively targeted by the Federal Reserve, and longer-maturity term fed funds rates. We develop a term-structure model which explicitly accounts for interest rate targeting and for the predictability of future target changes. The...

From a large options data set on major equity indexes across the world, we find that worldwide, implied volatilities of options on equity indexes exhibit strikingly similar behaviors. When plotted against moneyness, implied volatilities show a heavily skewed smirk pattern, implying that...