The Shape of Yield (Curves) to come

The last 6 months have been a boon for credit cycle investors who avoided significant losses arising from the fall in bond prices. The data has been clear for some time, however, that the market was mispricing bonds. See here and here. The market has now realised its...

Faulty Interest Rate Signals Strike Again

Markets on the whole do a decent job of synthesizing information at the micro level, but they often get the macro signals wrong as was noted by Paul Samuelson. In his 1998 paper, Samuelson argued that there is no persuasive evidence that macro market inefficiency is...

The Interest Rate Confusion Returns

The late economist Axel Leijonhufvud noted in a 1979 essay that the theory of the interest rate mechanism remains at the centre of the confusion in modern macroeconomics. All the inconclusive quarrels, he argued, largely stem from this source. While financial market...