This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper examines the relationship between government debt ...

This paper explores the transmission of credit conditions into the real economy. Specifically, I examine the forecasting power of the term structure of credit spreads for future GDP growth. I find that the whole term structure of credit spreads has predictive power, while the term structure of Treasury yields has none. Using a parsimonious macro-finance term structure model that captures the jo...

It was reported that the radiation-sensitive Medaka mutant "ric1" has a defect in the repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) induced by gamma-rays during early embryogenesis. To study the cellular response of a ric1 mutant to ionizing radiation (IR), we established the mutant embryonic cell lines RIC1-e9, RIC1-e42, RIC1-e43. Following exposure to gamma-irradiation, the DSBs in wild-type cell...

In the current contribution, we consider the present value of a series of fixed cash flows under stochastic interest rates. In order to model these interest rates, we don’t use the common lognormal model, but stable laws, which better fit in with reality. For this present value, we want to derive a result about the distribution function. However, due to the dependencies between successive disco...

The federal funds rate has been stuck at the zero bound for over two years, and the Fed has instead resorted to unconventional monetary policies, such as large scale asset purchases to provide stimulus to the economy. This paper uses a structural VAR to identify the e¤ects of monetary policy shocks on the con…guration of interest rates during this period. The VAR is identi…ed using the assumpti...

We develop a state space framework for estimating term structure models, where latent Markovian state variables are mapped non-linearly into observable market data. The measurement equation of our framework is explicitly constructed such that it takes raw market prices and rates as direct inputs. We thus avoid entirely, the need for data preprocessing, such as the use of ad hoc interpolation an...

Since 2007, three actors have been particularly important in U.S. Treasury auctions: The U.S. government, issuing $8.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities in 2010 alone; foreign official entities, purchasing $398 billion in U.S. Treasury securities in 2010 alone; and finally the Federal Reserve, which intervened in the U.S. Treasury market by purchasing $900 billion U.S. Treasury securities du...

Our previous study described a real-time PCR method to quantify microRNA (miRNA) precursors using SYBR green detection [T. D. Schmittgen, J. Jiang, Q. Liu and L. Yang (2004) Nucleic Acids Res., 32, e43]. The present study adapted the assay to a 384-well format and expanded it to include primers to 222 human miRNA precursors. TaqMan minor groove binder probes were used to discriminate nearly ide...