This paper examines the preferred-habitat theory under time-varying risk aversion. The predicted positive relation between the term spread and relative supply of longer-term debt is stronger when risk aversion is high. To capture this effect, a time-varying coefficient model is introduced and...

Der typische deutsche Konjunkturzyklus hat eine Länge von etwa vier bis fünf Jahren. Er ist recht ausgeprägt und erklärt allein etwa 27 % der Schwankungen in der BIP-Wachstumsrate. 83 % der Konjunktur geht auf Schwingungen mit einer Länge von über zwei Jahren zurück, nur 17 % können...

This paper proposes an ESTAR modeling framework to analyze the anchoring of inflation expectations. Anchoring criteria are empirical estimates of a market implied inflation target as well as the strength of the anchor that holds expectations at the target. Results from daily financial market...

Anchored inflation expectations are of key importance for monetary policy. If long-terminflation expectations arewell-anchored, they should be unaffected by short-term economic news. This letter introduces newsregressions with multiple endogenous breaks to investigate the de- and re-anchoring of...

We assess whether euro area inflation expectations, as measured by break-even inflation rates (BEIRs), have remained anchored during the financial crisis. Since autumn 2008, the volatility of BEIRs has increased considerably. We treat observed BEIRs as a sum of `genuine BEIRs' and additional...

The present paper sheds further light on a well-known (alleged) violation of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure (EHT) - the frequent finding of unit roots in interest rate spreads. We show that the EHT implies (i) that the nonstationarity stems from the holding premium, which is...

The present study addresses the economic interpretation of stock market volatility. We argue that its character is inherently ambivalent, being considered as an indicator of either information flow or uncertainty.We discriminate between these views by measuring the fraction of price changes that...