The optimal width of the central bank standing facilities corridor and banks' day-to-day liquidity management

Containing short-term volatility of the overnight interest rate is normally considered the main objective of central bank standing facilities. This paper develops a simple stochastic model to show how the width of the central bank standing facilities corridor affects banks’ day-to-day liquidity management and the volatility of the overnight rate. It is shown that the wider the corridor, the greater the interbank turnover, the leaner the central bank’s balance sheet (i.e. the lower the average recourse to standing facilities) and the greater short-term interest rate volatility. The obtained relationships are matched with central bank preferences to obtain an optimal corridor width. The model is tested against euro area and Hungarian daily data encompassing the financial crisis that began in 2007. JEL Classification: E4, E5liquidity management, money market, standing facilities

A structural model of central bank operations and bank intermediation

The banking system is modeled in a closed system of financial accounts, whereby the equilibrium volume of bank intermediation between households and corporates reflects structural parameters such as household preferences, comparative cost structures of heterogeneous banks, loan demand of corporates, and the difference between the borrowing rate and the deposit facility rate of the central bank. The model also allows understanding the link between this difference (the width of the central bank standing facilities corridor) and the stance of monetary policy, and how this link changes during a financial crisis. It is shown how the narrowing of the standing facilities corridor can make more accommodating the stance of monetary policy in a financial crisis. JEL Classification: E43, E44, G21bank intermediation, central bank crisis measures, central bank operations, standing facilities

Does Historical VIX Term Structure Contain Valuable Information for Predicting VIX Futures?

We suggest that the term structure of VIX futures shows a clear pattern of dependence on the current level of VIX index. At the low levels of VIX (below 20), the term structure is highly upward sloping, while at the high VIX levels (over 30) it is strongly downward sloping. We use these features to predict future VIX futures prices more precisely. We begin by introducing some quantitative measures of volatility term structure (VTS) and volatility risk premium (VRP). We use them further to estimate the distance between the actual value and the fair (model) value of the VTS. We find that this distance has significant predictive power for volatility futures and index futures and we use this feature to design simple strategies to invest in VIX futures

The value of a prepayment option in a fixed rate mortgage: Insights from breakeven volatility

This paper presents a novel approach of estimating the value of a prepayment option in a fixed rate loan based on the concept of breakeven volatility. Since the prepayment option can be exercised essentially at any time prior to maturity, its valuing requires: (i) a pricing model sophisticated enough to handle its early exercise feature; and (ii) a broad set of interest rate derivatives prices to which the model can be calibrated to preclude arbitrage. This paper shows that when the derivatives market is not developed enough to ensure calibration, a good approximation of the fair value of a prepayment option can be derived by constructing the “missing” derivatives prices by back-testing delta hedged swaptions. This produces a “fair” volatility surface conditioned on the realized historical zero coupon bond prices and swap rates, which can be used to calibrate the prepayment option pricing model. The paper presents numerical examples for the Polish market as of January 2017. The mortgage spread component related to the prepayment option price proves to be quite significant, stressing the importance of an adequate risk management of the inherent callability feature and possibly explains why fixed rate mortgage products have struggled to develop in Poland so far

Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Bermudan Swaptions Pricing Odyssey

Bermudan swaptions are options on interest rate swaps which can be exercised on one or more dates before the final maturity of the swap. Because the exercise boundary between the continuation area and stopping area is inherently complex and multi-dimensional for interest rate products, there is an inherent “tug of war” between the pursuit of calibration and pricing precision, tractability, and implementation efficiency. After reviewing the main ideas and implementation techniques underlying both single- and multi-factor models, we offer our own approach based on dimension reduction via Markovian projection. Specifically, on the theoretical side, we provide a reinterpretation and extension of the classic result due to Gyöngy which covers non-probabilistic, discounted, distributions relevant in option pricing. Thus, we show that for purposes of swaption pricing, a potentially complex and multidimensional process for the underlying swap rate can be collapsed to a one-dimensional one. The empirical contribution of the paper consists in demonstrating that even though we only match the marginal distributions of the two processes, Bermudan swaptions prices calculated using such an approach appear well-behaved and closely aligned to counterparts from more sophisticated models