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Mutual funds investing in illiquid corporate bonds actively manage Treasury positions to buffer redemption shocks. This liquidity management practice can transmit non-fundamental fund flow shocks onto Treasuries, generating excess return volatility. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that Treasury excess return volatility is positively associated with bond fund ownership, and this pattern is more pronounced among funds conducting intensive liquidity management. Causal evidence is provided by exploiting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's 2017 Liquidity Risk Management Rule. Evidence also suggests that the COVID-19 Treasury market turmoil was attributed to intensified liquidity management, an unintended consequence of the 2017 Liquidity Risk Management Rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the internal–external composition of government debt affects the government's borrowing policy, sovereign risk, and welfare in a small open economy. To this end, I develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with endogenous default risk that includes both external and domestic debt. I calibrate the model to Argentina, and I show that the model closely reproduces key empirical moments. Moreover, I highlight the existence of an externality that distorts debt composition: Domestic debt levels are inefficiently low and default risk is inefficiently high. The welfare loss associated with the externality is roughly 0.7% when it is measured in permanent units of consumption. A Pigouvian subsidy that incentivizes domestic purchases of government bonds restores efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How reliable is the recovery theorem of Ross (2015)? We explore this question in the context of options on the 30-year Treasury bond futures, allowing us to deduce restrictions that link the physical and risk-neutral return distributions. Our empirical results undermine the implications of the recovery theorem. First, we reject an implicit assumption of the recovery theorem that the martingale component of the stochastic discount factor is identical to unity. Second, we consider the restrictions between the physical and risk-neutral return moments when the recovery theorem holds, and reject them in both forecasting regressions and generalized method of moments estimations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the relative pricing of pairs of emerging market (EM) sovereign bonds issued in both dollars and euros to study capital markets frictions during periods of financial distress. During the 2007-2008 crisis, we find the emergence of large pricing anomalies in EM sovereign bond markets. Neither liquidity nor short-selling constraints can explain these persistent events. We use both cross-sectional and time-series information on these pricing anomalies to learn about specific geographical frictions in funding markets. We find support for explanations based on the interaction of banking capital-structure frictions and the fragility of wholesale funding markets. We document the effects of nonconventional policy interventions on this mispricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that Treasury security prices in the secondary market decrease significantly in the few days before Treasury auctions and recover shortly thereafter, even though the time and amount of each auction are announced in advance. These results are linked to dealers' limited risk-bearing capacity and end-investors' imperfect capital mobility, highlighting the important role of frictions even in very liquid financial markets. Our results imply a hidden issuance cost to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, estimated to be 9 to 18 bps of the auction size, or over half a billion dollars for the issuance size in 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, G7 central banks have launched asset purchase programs in anticipation of an increase in government bond offerings to finance ballooning fiscal deficits. As the volume of government bonds owned by private investors is not expected to rise during the current crisis, these programs will amount to a monetization of large additional debt. The idea that the government sells bonds to the central bank or issues money by literally spending it into existence also plays a key role in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the concept of helicopter money and the idea of permanent monetary finance. This article subjects key aspects of MMT to critical examination and shows, using MMT's own balance sheet analysis, that the theory is almost always contradicted by the actual workings of the modern credit economy. In fact, MMT seems to be a collection of prescriptive ideas that dictate how things should function as opposed to how they actually do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the response of sovereign bond prices to net supply shocks caused by purchase operations under the ECB's Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP). To avoid simultaneity bias in the estimated relationship between prices and purchases, we exploit a PSPP feature that renders securities temporarily ineligible for reasons unrelated to their prices. Using these purchase restrictions as an instrument to identify exogenous variation in purchase volumes, we find that PSPP causes statistically significant and economically relevant upward price impacts. The impacts are short‐lived and concentrated in securities issued by higher yield jurisdictions and characterized by higher maturity and lower liquidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the impact of foreign official purchases of the U.S. treasury securities on the entire yield curve of the contract. Topics discussed include importance of foreign official purchases for monetary policy, impact of innovations in foreign official purchases on macroeconomic outcomes, and the response of yields to macroeconomics' standard deviation shock.

We simulate a 10‐period overlapping generations model with aggregate shocks to price safe and risky government obligations using consumption‐asset pricing. Agents cannot trade with future generations to hedge the model's productivity and depreciation shocks, and can only invest in one‐period bonds and risky capital. We find that the pricing of short‐ and long‐dated riskless obligations is anchored to the prevailing risk‐free return. The prices of obligations whose values are proportional to the prevailing wage are essentially identical to those of safe obligations, notwithstanding large macro shocks. On the contrary, government obligations in the form of options entail significant risk adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses why the French and US banks Paribas and Speyers underwrote a series of loans to revolutionary Mexico in 1912 and 1913, when the state was in the process of collapsing. This is a case of a war debt that failed to prevent the borrowing government from suspending payments and subsequently falling. Based on unpublished primary documents, the article shows that the 1913 loan involved a conflict of interest. The credit delayed a default and sustained the price of Mexican securities while Paribas, its main underwriter, was liquidating its Mexican portfolio. Evidence also suggests the existence of asymmetry of information. Paribas accessed pessimistic but accurate first‐hand information on Mexico, while the public read over‐optimistic press reports. Paribas forced the government to sell the bonds on the primary market at a price that was low, controlling for publicly available data. It subsequently sold the bonds at a margin on the secondary market. An additional reason for the lending is the Nacional railway, a state‐owned company that used a share of the funds to pay its debt. More exposed to Mexico than Paribas, the small and internationalized Speyers held the bad bonds it had underwritten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest rates are currently very low in the countries. In these countries bonds are issued with low or negative yields. In this paper, I empirically investigate the factors that affect the price of bonds. I follow international arbitrage pricing theory to determine the relationship between factors and the price of bonds. The international arbitrage pricing theory applies a multi-linear regression model. The regression model is used for emerging markets and developing markets separately. I have a unique data set of 46 countries. The main data are the monthly returns on government bonds in the period 2010 - 2015. Exchange risk influences the bond prices. Currency movements can bring further yield for investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profound financial crisis generated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the European sovereign debt crisis in 2011 have caused negative values of government bond yields both in the USA and in the EURO area. This paper investigates whether the use of models which allow for negative interest rates can improve option pricing and implied volatility forecasting. This is done with special attention to foreign exchange and index options. To this end, we carried out an empirical analysis on the prices of call and put options on the US S&P 500 index and Eurodollar futures using a generalization of the Heston model in the stochastic interest rate framework. Specifically, the dynamics of the option’s underlying asset is described by two factors: a stochastic variance and a stochastic interest rate. The volatility is not allowed to be negative, but the interest rate is. Explicit formulas for the transition probability density function and moments are derived. These formulas are used to estimate the model parameters efficiently. Three empirical analyses are illustrated. The first two show that the use of models which allow for negative interest rates can efficiently reproduce implied volatility and forecast option prices (i.e. S&P index and foreign exchange options). The last studies how the US three-month government bond yield affects the US S&P 500 index. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, using the measures of the credit risk price spread (CRiPS) and the standardized credit risk price spread (S-CRiPS) proposed in Kariya's (A CB (corporate bond) pricing model for deriving default probabilities and recovery rates. Eaton, IMS Collection Series: Festschrift for Professor Morris L., 2013) corporate bond model, we make a comprehensive empirical credit risk analysis on individual corporate bonds (CBs) in the US energy sector, where cross-sectional CB and government bond price data is used with bond attributes. Applying the principal component analysis method to the S-CRiPSs, we also categorize individual CBs into three different groups and study on their characteristics of S-CRiPS fluctuations of each group in association with bond attributes. Secondly, using the market credit rating scheme proposed by Kariya et al. (2014), we make credit-homogeneous groups of CBs and show that our rating scheme is empirically very timely and useful. Thirdly, we derive term structures of default probabilities for each homogeneous group, which reflect the investors' views and perspectives on the future default probabilities or likelihoods implicitly implied by the CB prices for each credit-homogeneous group. Throughout this paper it is observed that our credit risk models and the associated measures for individual CBs work effectively and can timely provide the market credit information evaluated by investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Municipal governments are often very slow in producing and disclosing financial statements, with the average time for filing compulsory statements taking over twice as long as the SEC-mandated time for publicly traded corporations. There are typically no governmental rules or explicit penalties connected with extended financial reporting. We propose this delay in reporting is likely to have negative capital market effects for the municipality and we investigate the credit market consequences of delayed reporting. Our empirical results are consistent with delayed reporting resulting in lower bond ratings for municipalities indicating a negative interpretation by bond rating analysts. Furthermore, we also find a higher yield for the government's bonds consistent with bond market investors also viewing this delay as a negative signal with respect to the particular government entity. Our results add to the literature on government reporting as well as the literature regarding the determinants of government bond pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Gauweiler case on the legality of the Outright Monetary Transactions Programme of the European Central Bank, analyzes the decision of the European Court of Justice issued on June 16, 2015, and examines the nature of the mandate and the rationale of its limits. Topics discussed include implications of the decision on the interpretation of the limits set by the European Central Bank, and how the role of the Bank evolved, based on the Economic and Monetary Union.

In its first-ever preliminary reference, the German Federal Constitutional Court dictated in essence to the Court of Justice of the EU the interpretation that it should give to the Outright Monetary Transactions programme of the European Central Bank in order to avoid its ultra vires pronouncement. In its ruling, the Court proceeds to a teleological interpretation of the programme that acknowledges the wide margin of appreciation possessed by the ECB in the performance of its powers, and the interrelation that exists between monetary and economic policy. The Court also confirms that it is not intimidated by ultra vires threats and that it intends to protect its prerogatives under the preliminary reference procedure and the centralised system of judicial review prescribed by the Treaties. At the same time, its interpretation of the contested programme makes it challenging for the German constitutional court to proceed to an ultra vires ruling in the absence of a manifest breach on the part of the ECB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of several legal developments involving a crisis response in Europe's Economic and Monetary Union, and it mentions economic governance in the European Union (EU), financial stability, and monetary policy in the EU. Sovereign bond purchases and law enforcement in the EU are addressed, as well as banking unions and the European Financial Stability Board. Courts in EU Members States are examined, as well as the European Financial Stability Fund.

We show that the price of a Treasury bond and an inflation-swapped Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) issue exactly replicating the cash flows of the Treasury bond can differ by more than $20 per $100 notional. Treasury bonds are almost always overvalued relative to TIPS. Total TIPS-Treasury mispricing has exceeded $56 billion, representing nearly 8% of the total amount of TIPS outstanding. We find direct evidence that the mispricing narrows as additional capital flows into the markets. This provides strong support for the slow-moving-capital explanation of arbitrage persistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We use a panel of 10 euro area countries to assess the determinants of long-term sovereign bond yield spreads over the period 1999.01-2010.11. We find that government bond yield spreads are well explained by fiscal fundamentals over the crisis period. We also find that the menu of risk factors priced by markets has been significantly enriched since March 2009, including international risk, liquidity risk and the risk of the crisis' transmission among European Monetary Union member states. Finally, we find that transmission risk has increased considerably since spring 2009 because of rapidly increasing risk of investing in periphery bonds relative to core ones. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Price discovery in government bond markets is explored using Norwegian data including trades from both tiers of the market and dealer identities. The results show that while aggregate interdealer order flow explains one-fourth of daily yield changes, aggregate customer order flow has little explanatory power. Dealers are heterogeneously informed and appear to have different sources of information. While some dealers mainly rely on their customer trades, others appear to rely on skill in acquiring and interpreting other relevant information, suggesting that dealers play an independent role in the price discovery process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We argue that one reason why emerging economies borrow short term is that it is cheaper than borrowing long term. This is especially the case during crises, as during these episodes the relative cost of long-term borrowing increases. We construct a unique database of sovereign bond prices, returns, and issuances at different maturities for 11 emerging economies from 1990 to 2009 and present a set of new stylized facts. On average, these countries pay a higher risk premium on long-term than on short-term bonds. During crises, the difference between the two risk premia increases and issuance shifts towards shorter maturities. To illustrate our argument, we present a simple model in which the maturity structure is the outcome of a risk-sharing problem between an emerging economy subject to rollover crises and risk-averse international investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book (1993) Kariya proposed a government bond (GB) pricing model that simultaneously values individual fixed-coupon (non-defaultable) bonds of different coupon rates and maturities via a discount function approach, and Kariya and Tsuda (Financ Eng Japanese Mark 1:1-20, ) verified its empirical effectiveness of the model as a pricing model for Japanese Government bonds (JGBs) though the empirical setting was limited to a simple case. In this paper we first clarify the theoretical relation between our stochastic discount function approach and the spot rate or forward rate approach in mathematical finance. Then we make a comprehensive empirical study on the capacity of the model in view of its pricing capability for individual GBs with different attributes and in view of its capacity of describing the movements of term structures of interest rates that JGBs imply as yield curves. Based on various tests of validity in a GLS (Generalized Least Squares) framework we propose a specific formulation with a polynomial of order 6 for the mean discount function that depends on maturity and coupon as attributes and a specific covariance structure. It is shown that even in the middle of the Financial Crisis, the cross-sectional model we propose is shown to be very effective for simultaneously pricing all the existing JGBs and deriving and describing zero yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the construction of a new financial instrument whose payoffs are linked to the overall performance of the U.S. economy. The idea behind this financial instrument, known as a GDP bond, has been explored by financial economists for several years. Since there is no historical data for GDP bonds in the U.S., we construct a simulation process through which the payoff function for a GDP bond could be compared with other high quality bonds during the 1947-2010 period. It is observed that the GDP bond has a superior performance to other high quality bonds in a risk return framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the effect of formal guarantees of the British government on the performance of Turkish bonds issued in the second half of the nineteenth century. We compare the yields and prices of 11 bonds issued by the Ottoman government with different guarantees attached to each bond. Our findings indicate that the formal guarantee of the British government was significant in determining the prices and yields of Ottoman bonds. Even though the British guarantee had no effect on Ottoman institutions, practices, and fiscal fundamentals, the yields on the guaranteed loan did not move together with other Ottoman loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]