This paper analyses the UK interest rate term structure over the period since October 1992, when the United Kingdom adopted an explicit inflation target, using an affine term structure model estimated using both government bond yields and survey data. The model imposes no-arbitrage restrictions...

This paper analyses the nominal and real interest rate term structures in the United Kingdom over the fifteen-year period that the UK monetary authorities have pursued an explicit inflation target, using a four-factor essentially affine term structure model. The model imposes no-arbitrage...

Long-horizon interest rates in the major international bond markets fell sharply during 2004 and 2005, at the same time as US policy rates were rising; a phenomenon famously described as a 'conundrum' by Alan Greenspan the Federal Reserve Chairman. But it was arguably the decline in...

During 2004 and 2005, long-horizon interest rates fell sharply in major international government bond markets (Greenspan's "conundrum"). This common fall mainly reflected lower long real rates. To investigate possible causes, the authors apply a no-arbitrage affine modeling framework to...

This paper examines the question of whether the ability of market interest rates to predict future policy rate changes in the United Kingdom has changed markedly over the period 1975-2003. Such improvements in predictability could arise from greater transparency in the monetary policy process,...

The purpose of this paper is to characterize three commonly used double unit root tests in terms of their asymptotic local power. To this end, we study a class of nearly doubly integrated processes which in the limit will behave as a weighted integral of a double indexed Ornstein-Uhlenbeck...

We examine some of the consequences on commonly used unit root tests when the underlying series is integrated of order two. It turns out that standard augmented Dickey-Fuller type of tests for a single unit root have excessive density in the explosive region of the distribution. The lower...

This paper estimates yield curve models for the United Kingdom, where the underlying determinants have a macroeconomic interpretation. The first factor is an unobserved inflation target, the second factor is annual inflation, and the third factor is a ‘Taylor rule residual’, which, among...