In the first chapter, I analyze the US banking industry in order to explain two facts. First, larger banks have lower but less volatile returns on loans compared to smaller banks over the years. Second, larger borrowers have better financial records, i.e. verifiable "hard" information, and they...

In the first chapter, I examine an incomplete markets economy in a politico-economic general equilibrium setting in which the median voter chooses the inflation rate. I use an environment where individuals face an uninsurable idiosyncratic labor productivity shock, and money is the only asset....

Thesis (PhD (Economics))--Stellenbosch University, 2011.

Economics

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The effectiveness of monetary policy depends importantly on the expectations of the private sector, as it is largely through this channel of the transmission mechanism that policy changes are transmitted to long-term interest rates. This has increased the emphasis on the role...

Este documento analiza la información contenida en medidas alternativas de expectativas de inflación —incluidas las obtenidas a partir de consumidores, empresas, expertos y mercados financieros—, en el contexto de curvas de Phillips de economía abierta. Adoptando una aproximación...

En este documento se ofrece una panorámica de la evolución de la inflación a escala global en la última década y se trata de descubrir qué factores podrían explicar los niveles muy bajos de inflación durante la recuperación de la Gran Recesión. Se hace una revisión de la literatura...

In this paper we decompose nominal interest rates into real risk-free rates, inflation expectations and risk premia using an affine model that takes as factors the observed inflation rate and the parameters generated in the zero yield curve estimation. We apply this model to the Spanish economy...

In this paper we propose an affine model that uses as observed factors the Nelson and Siegel (NS) components summarising the term structure of interest rates. By doing so, we are able to reformulate the Diebold and Li (2006) approach to forecast the yield curve in a way that allows us to...

Este trabajo explora el comportamiento de las expectativas de inflación en países que comparten su política monetaria, en particular los de la UEM. Se investigan las posibles características comunes a varios horizontes, así como los diferenciales entre países. Se propone un modelo...