Markets for risky loans clear on two dimensions - an interest rate (or equivalently a spread above the riskless rate) and a specification of the amount of collateral per dollar of lending. The latter is summarized by the margin or "haircut" associated with the loan. Some key models of endogenous...

One of the great mysteries of finance is "what determines an interest rate?" The most basic framework is a supply and demand framework for loanable funds. Those who supply (i.e., save) have their reasons while those who demand (i.e., those who borrow) have their reasons. In this brief note we...

Equilibrium bond-pricing models rely on inflation being bad news for future growth to generate upward-sloping nominal yield curves. We develop a model that can generate upward-sloping nominal and real yield curves by instead using ambiguity about inflation and growth. Ambiguity can help resolve...

We explore the effect of taxes on the prices of municipal bonds. Although interest is tax-exempt, the gain resulting from purchasing a muni at a deep discount below the so-called de minimis threshold is subject to severe tax treatment. The gain is taxed as ordinary income at maturity; currently...

Some key features in the historical dynamics of U.S. Treasury bond yields-a trend in long-term yields, business cycle movements in short-term yields, and a level shift in yield spreads-pose serious challenges to existing equilibrium asset pricing models. This paper presents a new equilibrium...

The characterization of term premia movements continues to be a puzzle in finance though the term premia are used for return predictability and studying broader economic activity. We analyze the movements of the first and second conditional moments of term premia in a non-linear non- parametric...

The Gaussian affine interest rate models are widely used in the financial industry for pricing, hedging and also risk management purposes. We consider the multifactor models with time dependent parameters. Usually the models are simulated using some appropriate discretization schema because the...

Recent findings on the term structure of equity and bond yields pose serious challenges to existing models of equilibrium asset pricing. This paper presents a new equilibrium model of subjective expectations to explain the joint historical dynamics of equity and bond yields (and their yield...

Corporate credit lines are drawn more heavily when funding markets are more stressed. This covariance elevates expected bank funding costs. We show that credit supply is inefficiently dampened by the associated debt-overhang cost to bank shareholders. Until 2022, this impact was reduced by...

Corporate credit lines are drawn more heavily when funding markets are more stressed. This covariance elevates expected bank funding costs. We show that credit supply is dampened by the associated debt-overhang cost to bank shareholders. Until 2022, this impact was reduced by linking the...