Following the 2000 stockmarket crash, have US interest rates been held "too low" in relation to their natural level? Most likely, yes. Using a structural neo-Keynesian model, this paper attempts a real-time evaluation of the US monetary policy stance while ensuring consistency between the...

We jointly estimate the natural rate of interest, the natural rate of unemployment, expected inflation, and potential output for the Euro area, the United States, Sweden, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Particular attention is paid to time-variation in (i) the data-generation process for...

This paper analyses the determinants of the natural rate of interest in a non-linear model where agents are uncertain over both future technology growth and the future course of monetary policy. I show that the real natural rate can be affected by sizable uncertainty premia, including premia...

Interest rate guarantees seem to be included in lifeinsurance and pension products in most countries. The exact implementations of these guarantees vary from country to countryand are often linked to different distribution of investment surplusmechanisms...

The CKLS (1992) short-term risk-free interest rate process leads to valuation model for both default free bonds and contingent claims that can only be solved numerically for the general case. Valuation equations of this nature in the past have been solved using the Crank Nicolson scheme. In this...

Structural models for pricing risky debt imply a negative relationship betweeninterest rates and credit spreads. In contrast, credit default swap pricing modelsassume independence between credit risk and the term structure of interest rates.So far, empirical studies have focused on first...

In this paper we propose a jump-diffusion Libor model with jumps in ahigh-dimensional space (R^m) and test a stable non-parametric calibrationalgorithm which takes into account a given local covariance structure.The algorithm returns smooth and simply structured Lévy densities, andpenalizes the...

A system of U.S. and euro area short- and long-term interest rates is analyzed. According to the expectations hypothesis of the term structure the interest rate spreads should be stationary and according to the uncovered interest rate parity the difference between the U.S. and euro area longterm...

This paper evaluates the predictive power of different information sets for the European Central Bank(ECB) interest rate setting behavior. We employ an ordered probit model, i.e. a limited dependent variableframework, to take into account the discreteness displayed by policy rate changes. The...