This paper introduces a generalized discrete time framework to evaluate the empirical performance of a wide variety of well-known models in capturing the dynamic behavior of short term interest rates. A new class of models which displays nonlinearity and asymmetry in the drift, and incorporates...

This paper investigates the impact of agents' expectations about future fundamental economic disturbances (news) on macroeconomic dynamics. Several intuitive tests provide insight into the information content of the yield curve and its' ability to identify these 'news' disturbances. Bayesian...

This paper presents a new approach to deriving default intensities from CDS or bond spreads that yields smooth intensity curves required e.g. for pricing or risk management purposes. Assuming continuous premium or coupon payments, the default intensity can be obtained by solving an integral...

In this paper we give a generalized model of the interest rates term structure including Nelson-Siegel and Svensson structure. For that we introduce a continuous m-factor exponential-polynomial form of forward interest rates and demonstrate its considerably better performance in a fitting of the...

The main goal of this paper is to better understand the behavior of credit spreads in the past and the potential risk of unexpected future credit spread changes. One important consideration to note regarding credit spreads is the fact that bond spreads contain a liquidity premium, which...

In this paper we give a generalized model of the interest rates term structure including Nelson-Siegel and Svensson structure. For that we introduce a continuous m-factor exponential-polynomial form of forward interest rates and demonstrate its considerably better performance in a fitting of the...

This paper presents a new approach to deriving default intensities from CDS or bond spreads that yields smooth intensity curves required e.g. for pricing or risk management purposes. Assuming continuous premium or coupon payments, the default intensity can be obtained by solving an integral...

In this paper we propose a smooth transition tree model for both the conditional mean and the conditional variance of the short-term interest rate process. Our model incorporates the interpretability of regression trees and the flexibility of smooth transition models to describe regime switches...

Affine mortality models are well suited for theoretical and practical application in pricing and risk management of mortality risk. They produce consistent, closed-form stochastic survival curves allowing for the efficient valuation of mortality-linked claims. We model USA age-cohort mortality...

This paper analyzes the term structure of interest rates in an exchange-only Lucas (1978) economy where consumers learn about a stochastic growth rate through observations of the endowment process and an external public signal. We allow for deluded consumers, who exaggerate the degree of...