This thesis focus on a yield curve modelling. It estimates unobserved "global" yield curve factors which drives changes in individual real yield curves. Yield curves of USD, GBP, JPY and EUR are considered and global factors are able to explain substantial part of their variances. The method is built on the Nelson-Siegel model which is implemented in a state-space form to be able to extract the unobserved yield factors. The estimated global yield factors are further used for explaining the evolution of the Czech yield curve. Their impact to the Czech yield curve is estimated in a time-varying regression which results show that the impact of the global factors is stronger during the years of the interventions of the Czech National Bank and thus suggests that the interventions help to transmit the global low interest rates to the Czech economy.

The impact of rare disasters on equity premium and term premium in a New Keynesian DSGE model is explored in the thesis. Andreasen's (2012) model with Epstein-Zin preferences, bonds and a rare disaster shock in total factor productivity process is extended by a variable capital stock and an equity-type asset. We find that the variable capital significantly changes behavior of the model, capital depreciation must be substantially increased to counter the effect of variable capital and stochastic mean of inflation increases. The model calibrated to the US economy and a high risk aversion generates 10-year term premium of 90 basis points, rare disasters increase the premium only by 3 basis points. The equity premium is 163 basis points and rare disasters increase it also only by 3 basis points. The model with a low coefficient of relative risk aversion of 5.5 generates negative risk premia. Rare disasters increase the risk premia by mere 4 basis points in comparison to a model with i.i.d. shocks. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This doctoral thesis devotes itself to macro-finance models of the Czech yield curve that enable the modeling of the yield curve as a whole and belong to the group of multi-factors models. These factors are unobservable or latent variables, and are intuitively called level, slope and curvature. Macro-finance models not only fit the yield curve through the use of latent factors, but they also try to provide a macroeconomic interpretation. The macro part of the model uses a type of VAR model, where the macroeconomic variables are endogenous or exogenous, or some macroeconomic model based on e.g. a New Keynesian economy. Such a type of models can answer (1) how the macroeconomic variables affect the yield curve, and, on the other hand, (2) how these macroeconomic variables are affected by the yield curve. The EUR/CZK exchange rate and the external environment play an important role in the Czech small open economy (in particular, developments in the eurozone and the impact of global investors' sentiment toward risky assets). Thus, we should take this into consideration when applying to Czech data. It has been shown that temporary macroeconomic and financial shocks (to inflation, output gap, EUR/CZK exchange rate, external demand, etc.) strongly affect the short end of the yield curve; however, longer spot rates react only marginally. The longer end of the curve may move more significantly in the case of a longer duration of the above-mentioned shocks (thus affecting inflationary expectations) or in the case of shocks to the inflation target and real equilibrium interest rates.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how quantitative easing in the United States works through the transmission channels to establish a positive short-run effect on inflation. The research will be based on a time series analysis covering the period 2006-2015 with data collected on a monthly basis. As quantitative easing is a new unconventional monetary policy, we want to contribute to the understanding of its short-run effects on inflation. Using a distributed lag model, we conclude that quantitative easing is positively related to inflation in the short-run. The U.S. short-term interest rate, the federal funds rate, is included in the estimated model to see if it works when quantitative easing has been implemented. Furthermore, crude oil and the USD/EUR exchange rate is included as control variables to reduce the effects of exogenous factors in the estimated model. The regression results of quantitative easing and the federal funds rate showed statistical significance against inflation, however with a very small effect, respectively. In the final section we discuss the limitations of this thesis and future research possibilities.

Diversos são os benefícios e objetivos de um profundo entendimento técnico do comportamento das taxas de juros, tanto de uma economia madura como de uma emergente. Do planejamento à execução de política monetária e da criação de cenários econômicos para tomada de decisão à alocação de recursos baseada somente nesses cenários, esses agentes podem fazer uso do arcabouço teórico que embasa as diferentes hipóteses de mercados eficientes e expectativas racionais, bem como do prêmio de risco, entre outras. Diante desse contexto, faz-se necessário estar em constante contato com o que a comunidade acadêmica desenvolve de tecnologia no estudo de curvas de juros. Este trabalho abordará as relações de cointegração e a possibilidade de elaboração de estratégias de investimentos de recursos financeiros baseadas somente nas relações descobertas. As diferentes modalidades operacionais foram escolhidas buscando replicar empiricamente no mercado de derivativos os fatores mais utilizados nos modelos de estimação e previsão de curva de juros e taxas a termo de juros. Visto que tais estratégias demandam mais sofisticação por parte do investidor, tendem a ser implementadas mais comumente por gestores profissionais e profissionais de bancos, e tentar-se-á mensurar seu potencial de retorno e sua remuneração frente ao risco tomado. / Many benefits and objectives came from a deep understanding of interest rates behavior in developed countries and in emergent markets. From plan to execute monetary policy, to create economics scenarios, the decision that are made based in those scenarios, and for any kind of asset allocation, all market participants can use the theory that underlies the efficient market hypothesis, rational expectations and all kinds of risk premium. In this context, it is necessary to be in touch with academic literature technology about yield curves. This paper addresses the cointegration relations on interest rates and the trading opportunities that came from these relations. The strategies was chosen looking for apply in the markets the most usual models present on yield curve and forward rate estimation and prediction fields. Since these strategies demand a higher sophistication from investors, they tend to be used for professional asset managers and bankers. This work intends measure the potential profits and the return towards the risk of this investment approach.

We address the issue of market incompleteness in the time dimension. Specifically, we focus on interest rate markets and the yield curve extraction. The lack of information about interest rates manifest itself in a non-invertible linear system. The usual approach to circumvent this problem is by applying various curve fitting methods - both parametric and non-parametric. We argue in favor of a novel method relying on information theory, which reformulates the ill-posed linear algebra problem into a well-posed optimization problem, where the linear pricing equations are used as constraints. Local cross entropy is used to determine the optimal solution among the admissible solutions, while all the input prices reflected in constraints are perfectly matched. Large-scale optimization package called AMPL is used extensively throughout this work to obtain the optimal solution as well as to demonstrate the implementation details.

A popular class of yield curve models is based on the Nelson and Siegel (1987) (hereafter NS) approach of fitting yield curve data with simple functions of maturity. However, NS models are not theoretically consistent and they also lack an economic foundation, which limits their wider application in finance and economics. This thesis derives an intertemporally-consistent and arbitrage-free version of the NS model, and provides an explicit macroeconomic foundation for that augmented NS (ANS) model. To illustrate the general applicability of the ANS model, it is then applied to four distinct topics spanning finance and economics, each of which are active areas of research in their own right: i.e (1) forecasting the yield curve; (2) investigating relationships between the yield curve and the macroeconomy; (3) fixed interest portfolio management; and (4) investigating the uncovered interest parity hypothesis (UIPH). In each application, the ANS model allows the formal derivation of a parsimonious theoretical framework that captures the essence of the topic under investigation and is readily applicable in practice. Respectively: (1) the intertemporal consistency embedded in the ANS model results in a vector-autoregressive equation that projects the future yield curve from the current yield curve, and forecasts from that model outperform the random-walk benchmark; (2) the economic foundation for the ANS model leads to a single-equation relationship between the current shape of the yield curve and the magnitude and timing of future output growth, and empirical estimations confirm that the theoretical relationship holds in practice; (3) the ANS model provides a theoretically-consistent framework for quantifying risk and returns in fixed interest portfolios, and portfolios optimised ex-ante using that framework outperform a passive benchmark; and (4) the ANS model allows interest rates to be decomposed into a component related to economic fundamentals in the underlying economy, and a component related to cyclical influences. Empirical tests based on the fundamental interest rate components do not reject the UIPH, while the UIPH is rejected based on the cyclical interest rate components. This provides empirical support for suggestions in the theoretical literature that interest rate and exchange rate dynamics associated with cyclical interlinkages between the economy and financial markets under rational expectations may contribute materially to the UIPH puzzle.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how well Swedish banks’ follow the interest rate development of Swedish Treasury Bills and Swedish Government Bonds when they are determining the levels for their deposit and lending rates. Individuals’ deposits in a bank serves as one of the banks main assets in the balance sheet, and the spread between the bank’s deposit rate and the short-term market rate is a large source of funding for the bank. If there is a strong relationship of this spread over time, one may assume that this spread is of great importance for financing of the banking firm. The spread between the bank’s lending rate and the long-term market rate – credit risk spread – also serves a large source of interest income for the bank, and if this relationship is strong over time, one may assume that this spread is of great importance for financing of the banking firm as well. The banks subjected for investigation in this paper are Handelsbanken (SHB) and Föreningssparbanken (FSB). This paper finds a weaker relationship between the banks’ deposit rates and the short-term market rates, than for the lending rates and the long-term market rates. This indicates that the credit risk spread is of greater importance for financing of the banking firm than the funding spread. The weaker relationship between the banks’ deposit rates and the short-term market rate may be due to the great variability of savings alternatives offered in the market place today. The fact that banks today have deposit-deficit may also explain the weaker relationship, which may be explained by the Baumol-Tobin transaction model – where the higher the interest rate, the greater amount is being kept in the account. The stronger relationship between the banks’ lending rate and the long-term market rate may be due to the nature of the credit risk spread to function as a price-discrimination tool between lending clients.

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U.S. Treasury Securities are crucially important in many areas of finance. However, zero-coupon yields are not observable in the market. Even though published zero- coupon yields exist, they are sometimes not available for certain research topics or for high frequency. Recently, high frequency data analysis has become popular, and the GovPX database is a good source of tick data for U.S. Treasury securities from which we can construct zero-coupon yield curves. Therefore, we try to t zero- coupon yield curves from low frequency and high frequency data from GovPX by three different methods: the Nelson-Siegel method, the Svensson method, and the cubic spline method. Then, we try to retest the expectations hypothesis (EH) with new zero-coupon yields that are made from GovPX data by three methods using the Campbell and Shiller regression, the Fama and Bliss regression, and the Cochrane and Piazzesi regression. Regardless of the method used (the Nelson-Siegel method, the Svensson method, or the cubic spline method), the expectations hypothesis cannot be rejected in the period from June 1991 to December 2006 for most maturities in many cases. We suggest the possible explanation for the test result of the EH. Based on the overreaction hypothesis, the degree of the overreaction of spread falls over time. Thus, our result supports that the evidence of rejection of the EH has weaken over time. Also, we introduce a new estimation method for the stochastic volatility model of the short-term interest rates. Then, we compare our method with the existing method. The results suggest that our new method works well for the stochastic volatility model of short-term interest rates.