The term structure of interest rates in the economic and monetary union

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to present a new numerical procedure that can be used to implement a variety of different interest rate models. The new approach allows to construct no-arbitrage models for the term structure, where the stochastic process driving the rates is infinitely divisible, as in the cases of pure-diffusion and jump-diffusion mean reverting models. The new method determines a unique fully specified hexanomial tree, consistent with risk neutral probabilities. A simple forward recursive procedure solves for the entire tree. The proposed lattice model, which generalized the Hull and White [37] single-factor model, is relatively simple, computational efficient and can fit any initial term structure observed in the market. Numerical experiments demonstrate how the jump-diffusion mean reverting model is particularly suited to describe the European money market rates behavior. Interest rates controlled by the monetary authorities behave as if they are jump processes and the term structure, at short maturity, is contingent upon the levels of these official rates.