Essays on Macro-Finance Relationships

Abstract

of The Dissertation Essays on Macro-Finance Relationships by Azamat Abdymomunov Doctor of Philosophy in Economics Washington University in St. Louis, 2010 Professor James Morley, Chair In my dissertation, I study relationships between macroeconomics and financial markets. In particular, I empirically investigate the links between key macroeconomic indicators, such as output, inflation, and the business cycle, and the pricing of financial assets. The dissertation comprises three essays. The first essay investigates how the entire term structure of interest rates is influenced by regime-shifts in monetary policy. To do so, we develop and estimate an arbitrage-free dynamic term-structure model which accounts for regime shifts in monetary policy, volatility, and the price of risk. Our results for U.S. data from 1985-2008 indicate that (i) the Fed’s reaction to inflation has changed over time, switching between “more active” and “less active” monetary policy regimes, (ii) the yield curve in the “more active” regime was considerably more volatile than in the “less active” regime, and (iii) on average, the slope of the yield curve in the “more active” regime was steeper than in the “less active” regime. The steeper yield curve in the “more active” regime reflects higher term premia that result from the risk associated with a more volatile future short-term rate given a more sensitive response to inflation. This essay is a joint work with Kyu Ho Kang