This paper describes developments in real long-term interest rates in the main OECD economies and surveys their various determinants. Real long-term government bond yields declined from the 1980s to very low levels in the recent period, though they have not reached the historical lows of the...

In this paper, we propose a model of the joint dynamics of euro-area sovereign yield curves. The arbitrage-free valuation framework involves five factors and two regimes, one of the latter being interpreted as a crisis regime. These common factors and regimes explain most of the fluctuations in...

This paper develops an arbitrage-free affine term structure model of potentially defaultable sovereign bonds to model a cross-section of eight euro area government bond yield curves since January 1999. The existence of a common monetary policy under European Monetary Union determines the short...

We study the debt-stabilizing properties of indexing debt to GDP using a consumption-based macro-finance model. Three results stand out: (i) GDP-linked bond prices would embed sizeable and time-varying risk premiums of about 40 basis points, (ii) for a fixed budget surplus, issuing GDP-linked...