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This paper examines the responsiveness of bond yields to changes in debt supply. The preferred-habitat theory predicts a positive relation between the term spread and relative supply of longer term debt, and that this relation is stronger when risk aversion is high. To capture this effect, a time-varying coefficient model is introduced and applied to German bond data. The results support the theoretical predictions and indicate substantial time variation: under high risk aversion, yield spreads react about three times more strongly than when risk aversion is low. The accumulated response of term spreads to a one standard deviation change in debt supply ranges between 4 and 46 basis points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we show the interrelation of the purchasing power parity and the uncovered interest rate parity between the US and Germany for the recent period running from 1999:01 to 2014:04. This study extends the literature by testing both hypotheses simultaneously in a multivariate ECM. This has the advantage that interactions between capital and goods markets can be considered simultaneously. Our finding of two long-run relationships between the variables shows that a disequilibrium in one of the two markets leads to a disequilibrium in the other. While analysing the reaction to cumulative shocks, we show that US variables have a greater impact on German variables than vice versa. Therefore, the rising importance of the euro and the increased integration of the European Union in the recent decade have not changed this relation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We use the Johansen cointegration approach to assess the empirical validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) between the UK and Germany since the introduction of the euro. We conduct the empirical analysis in the context of the global financial crisis that began in 2007 and find that it directly affects the cointegration space. We fail to validate the Johansen and Juselius () original hypothesis that nonstationarity of PPP associates with the nonstationarity of interest rate differentials to produce a stationary relation. On the other hand, we do not reject PPP. We find that PPP cointegrates with inflation differentials. We also find, contrary to conventional wisdom, that (i) equilibrium adjustment occurs between the German and UK inflation rates, while weak exogeneity exists for the German and UK interest rates and the PPP condition, and (ii) three common trends associated with the German interest rate the UK interest rate, and the PPP condition 'push' the system with the German interest rate and the PPP condition playing dominant roles in affecting inflation in both Germany and the UK. These results cast serious doubt on the presumed independence of the UK monetary policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents joint econometric analysis of interest rate risk, issuer-specific risk (credit risk) and bond-specific risk (liquidity risk) in a reduced-form framework. We estimate issuer-specific and bond-specific risk from corporate bond data in the German market. We find that bond-specific risk plays a crucial role in the pricing of corporate bonds. We observe substantial differences between different bonds with respect to the relative influence of issuer-specific vs. bond-specific spread on the level and the volatility of the total spread. Issuer-specific risk exhibits strong autocorrelation and a strong impact of weekday effects, the level of the risk-free term structure and the debt to value ratio. Moreover, we can observe some impact of the stock market volatility, the respective stock's return and the distance to default. For the bond-specific risk we find strong autocorrelation, some impact of the stock market index, the stock market volatility, weekday effects and monthly effects as well as a very weak impact of the risk-free term structure and the specific stock's return. Altogether, the determinants of the spread components vary strongly between different bonds/issuers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a nonlinear one-factor term structure model in discrete time. The short-term interest rate follows a self-exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) process that allows for shifts in the intercept and the variance. In comparison with a linear model, we find empirical evidence in favour of the threshold model for Germany and the US. Based on the estimated short-rate dynamics we derive the implied arbitrage-free term structure of interest rates. Since analytical solutions are not feasible, bond prices are computed by means of Monte Carlo integration. The resulting term structure captures stylized facts of the data. In particular, it implies a nonlinear relation between long rates and the short rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]