The recent macro-finance yield curve literature does not agree neither about term premia empirical properties nor about the importance or even the direction of its relationship with future economic activity. This paper proposes a two-step approach to handle both problems. First, in a VAR...

This article looks at the factors explaining the level of US and European long-term interest rates between 1986 and 2005. We begin by selecting the structural determinants of long-term interest rates, dealing with the US and European cases separately. However, a univariate framework cannot...