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This article examines the sensitivity of U.S. sector equity indices to changes in nominal interest rates and in the corresponding principal components (level, slope and curvature of the U.S. yield curve) over the period 1990-2013 using factor models and a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (N.A.R.D.L.) approach. Furthermore, for robustness, this research analyses whether the sensitivity of sector stock returns is different depending on the stage of the economy, splitting the whole sample period into two sub-periods: pre-crisis and subprime crisis. In general, the empirical results confirm a substantial exposure to interest rate risk that depends on the model used and the period analysed. In addition, considering the three principal components of the U.S. yield curve, the sensitivity to changes in these components tends to be stronger during the subprime crisis sub-period. Finally, in the N.A.R.D.L. context, about 50% of sectors show long-run relations between sector stock returns and the explanatory factors, mainly during the whole sample and the pre-crisis sub-period. Nevertheless, short-run responses may be mostly shown in the subprime crisis sub-period. Therefore, our results evidence that nominal interest rates and its three components would have asymmetric effects on the U.S. stock returns at sector level, depending on the stage of the economy.

This paper studies the sensitivity of share prices of Spanish companies included in the IBEX-35 to changes in different explanatory variables, such as market returns, interest rates and factors proposed by Fama and French (1993, 2015) between 2000 and 2016. In addition, for robustness, this paper analyses whether the sensitivity of stock returns is different between two periods: precrisis and recent financial crisis. The results confirm that, in general, all the considered factors are relevant. Furthermore, “market return” and “size” factors show greater explanatory power, together with the “value” factor in the crisis period. Regarding the analysis at sector level, “Oil and Energy”, “Basic Materials, Industry and Construction” and “Financial and Real Estate Services” sectors appear to be highly sensitive to changes in the risk factors included in the asset pricing factor model.

This paper analyzes investor behavior depending on the flow-through capability (FTC) in the US stock market, because investors seek protection from inflation rate changes, and the FTC (a firm's ability to transmit inflation shocks to the prices of its products and services) is a key factor in investment decisions. Our estimates of the FTC of firms listed on the US stock exchange at the sector level are significantly different among industries, and we demonstrate a direct relationship between changes in stock prices (at the sector level) and FTC. These results would be relevant because they have important implications on investor behavior.

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This paper examines the behavior of the interest rate risk management measures for bonds with embedded options and studies factors it depends on. The contingent option exercise implies that both the pricing and the risk management of bonds requires modelling future interest rates. We use the Ho and Lee (HL) and Black, Derman, and Toy (BDT) consistent interest rate models. In addition, specific interest rate measures that consider the contingent cash-flow structure of these coupon-bearing bonds must be computed. In our empirical analysis, we obtained evidence that effective duration and effective convexity depend primarily on the level of the forward interest rate and volatility. In addition, the higher the interest rate change and the lower the volatility, the greater the differences in pricing of these bonds when using the HL or BDT models.