The determinants of yield curve dynamics have been thoroughly discussed in finance models. However, little can be said about the macroeconomic factors behind the movements of short- and long-term interest rates as well as the risk compensation demanded by financial investors. By taking on a macro-finance perspective, the book’s approach explicitly acknowledges the close feedback between monetary policy, the macroeconomy and financial conditions. Both theoretical and empirical models are applied in order to get a profound understanding of the interlinkages between economic activity, the conduct of monetary policy and the underlying macroeconomic factors of bond price movements. Moreover, the book identifies a broad risk-taking channel of monetary transmission which allows a reassessment of the role of financial constraints; it enables policy makers to develop new guidelines for monetary policy and for financial supervision of how to cope with evolving financial imbalances.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in the Preface to his famous Discourse on Inequality that “I consider the subject of the following discourse as one of the most interesting questions philosophy can propose, and unhappily for us, one of the most thorny that philosophers can have to solve. For how shall we know the source of inequality between men, if we do not begin by knowing mankind?” (Rousseau, 1754). This citation of Rousseau appears in an article in Spanish where Dagum (2001), in the memory of whom this book is published, also cites Socrates who said that the only useful knowledge is that which makes us better and Seneca who wrote that knowing what a straight line is, is not important if we do not know what rectitude is. These references are indeed a good illustration of Dagum’s vast knowledge, which was clearly not limited to the ?eld of Economics. For Camilo the ?rst part of Rousseau’s citation certainly justi?ed his interest in the ?eld of inequality which was at the centre of his scienti?c preoccupations. It should however be stressed that for Camilo the second part of the citation represented a “solid argument in favor of giving macroeconomic foundations to microeconomic behavior” (Dagum, 2001). More precisely, “individualism and methodological holism complete each other in contributing to the explanation of individual and social behavior” (Dagum, 2001).

This book is dedicated to the study of the term structures of the yields of zero-coupon bonds. The methods it describes differ from those usually found in the literature in that the time variable is not the term to maturity but the interest rate duration, or another convenient non-linear transformation of terms. This makes it possible to consider yield curves not only for a limited interval of term values, but also for the entire positive semiaxis of terms.

Das Buch führt in die grundlegenden Bereiche der klassischen Zeitreihenanalyse ein. Deshalb spielen in den ersten Kapiteln die Begriffe Stationarität und Autokovarianz- bzw. Autokorrelationsstruktur eine wesentliche Rolle. Ergänzend zu den grundlegenden Modellen werden aber auch schon zu Beginn eine Reihe von Beispielen diskutiert. Mit Hilfe des Spektralsatzes und der Filterung stationärer Zeitreihen kann die wichtige Klasse der ARMA-Modelle sehr effizient und erschöpfend behandelt werden.

This book grows from a conference on the state of the art and recent advances in Efficiency and Productivity. Papers were commissioned from leading researchers in the field, and include eight explorations into the analytical foundations of efficiency and productivity analysis. Chapters on modeling advances include reverse directional distance function, a new method for estimating technological production possibilities, a new distance function called a loss distance function, an analysis of productivity and price recovery indices, the relation of technical efficiency measures to productivity measures, the implications for benchmarking and target setting of imposing weight restrictions on DEA models, weight restrictions in a regulatory setting, and the Principle of Least Action.

This Fourth Edition updates the "Solutions Manual for Econometrics" to match the Sixth Edition of the Econometrics textbook. It adds problems and solutions using latest software versions of Stata and EViews. Special features include empirical examples replicated using EViews, Stata as well as SAS. The book offers rigorous proofs and treatment of difficult econometrics concepts in a simple and clear way, and provides the reader with both applied and theoretical econometrics problems along with their solutions. These should prove useful to students and instructors using this book.