Multi Yield Curve Stress-Testing Framework Incorporating Temporal and Cross Tenor Structural Dependencies

Abstract

We develop a new multi-curve modelling framework for the term-structure of interest rates that can generate consistent cross-country stressed scenarios allowing for significant spillover effects between economies. Modern models of the term structure of interest rates typically fail to capture jointly time and cross-curve dependencies and are not used for stress-testing purposes. Our methodology is able to jointly model the temporal and cross-country dependence structure of interest rate curves and associate movements in the interest rates and cross-country spreads with movements in macroeconomic variables as well as market-wide and country-specific measures of liquidity and credit quality. We apply our methodology to generate contemporaneous stressed scenarios to a set of European yield curves. Motivated by the recent eurozone debt crisis, we apply shocks to Italian and Spanish liquidity and credit variables and evaluate the impact of these shocks on several bond portfolio strategies. The empirical findings suggest that both country-specific liquidity and credit measures are important in explaining the dynamic behaviour of European sovereign interest rate curves and their dependence structure. Nevertheless, their importance varies across time, shock types and investment horizons.