The U.S. Treasury Yield Curve: 1961 to the Present

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The discount function, which determines the value of all future nominal payments, is the most basic building block of finance and is usually inferred from the Treasury yield curve. It is therefore surprising that researchers and practitioners do not have available to them a long history of high-frequency yield curve estimates. This paper fills that void by making public the Treasury yield curve estimates of the Federal Reserve Board at a daily frequency from 1961 to the present. We use a well-known and simple smoothing method that is shown to fit the data very well. The resulting estimates can be used to compute yields or forward rates for any horizon. We hope that the data, which are posted on the website http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2006 and which will be updated quarterly, will provide a benchmark yield curve that will be useful to applied economists. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Artificial Intelligence in Swedish Policies::Values, benefits, considerations and risks

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics and Automated Decision MakingInternational audienceArtificial intelligence (AI) is said to be the next big phase in digitalization. There is a global ongoing race to develop, implement and make use of AI in both the private and public sector. The many responsibilities of governments in this race are complicated and cut across a number of areas. Therefore, it is important that the use of AI supports these diverse aspects of governmental commitments and values. The aim of this paper is to analyze how AI is portrayed in Swedish policy documents and what values are attributed to the use of AI. We analyze Swedish policy documents and map benefits, considerations and risks with AI into different value ideals, based on an established e-government value framework. We conclude that there is a discrepancy in the policy level discourse on the use of AI between different value ideals. Our findings show that AI is strongly associated with improving efficiency and service quality in line with previous e-government policy studies. Interestingly, few benefits are highlighted concerning engagement of citizens in policy making. A more nuanced view on AI is needed for creating realistic expectations on how this technology can benefit society

Is time-variant information stickiness state-dependent?

This paper estimates information stickiness with regard to inflation expectations in the United States and the Eurozone for the 1981/06–2015/12 and 1998/Q4–2015/Q2 periods, respectively, and further investigates whether such information stickiness is state- dependent. Based on a bootstrap sub-sample rolling-window estimation, we find that information stickiness varies over time, which contradicts the strict time dependency implied under sticky-information theory. We provide evidence that information stickiness depends on inflation volatility, which indicates that information stickiness is state-dependent and that it has a time trend. Using a threshold model, we estimate structural changes in the state- dependence and time-trend of information stickiness. The results show that information stickiness has been more dependent on inflation volatility and has had a higher time-trend in both regions following the 2008 financial crisis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio