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The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake prompted Japan to implement a unique fiscal strategy to secure essential reconstruction funds while minimizing financial burdens on future generations. This study examines the Reconstruction Tax, introduced in the aftermath of the disaster, as a model of fiscal policy that utilizes taxation to fund reconstruction efforts. Although tax hikes generally face resistance from the public, the Reconstruction Tax was accepted, reflecting a national consensus on sharing the financial responsibilities of disaster recovery within the current generation. This acceptance was facilitated by the announcement of the Seven Principles, formulated by a specially organized council in response to the disaster, and the subsequent establishment of the Basic Act on Reconstruction in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake. The tax system was designed to be progressive, with rates determined by individuals' prior income levels, ensuring that contributions were fair and proportional to each citizen's financial capacity. This approach not only facilitated immediate recovery efforts but also demonstrated a model of fiscal policy that could be adopted by other nations facing similar catastrophic events. This analysis highlights the critical role of fair tax design and national solidarity in achieving effective disaster recovery and ensuring fiscal sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of an emerging capital market is necessary and requires all available resources and inputs from various sources to realize this objective. Several debates on government bonds' contribution to Nigeria's capital market developmental growth have ensued but have not triggered comprehensive studies in this area. The present research work seeks to close the breach by probing the impact of government bonds on developing the capital market in Nigeria from 2003-2019. We employ total market capitalization as the response variable to proxy the capital market, while various government bonds serve as the independent variables. The inflation rate moderates the predictor components. The research uses multiple regression technique to assess the explanatory variables' impact on the total market capitalization. At the same time, diagnostic tests help guarantee the normality of the regression model's data distribution and appropriateness. The findings reveal that the Federal Government of Nigeria's (FGN) bond is statistically significant and positive in influencing Nigeria's capital market growth. The other predictor variables are not found significant in this study. The study suggests that the Government should improve on the government bonds' coupon, while still upholding the none default norm in paying interest and refunding principal to investors when due. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian economy has been significantly affected by the Covid-19 virus and the associated health policy actions. This has warranted a comprehensive policy response from both fiscal and monetary policy. The monetary policy response has been directed at supporting households and businesses by keeping funding costs low and ensuring credit is available. The monetary policy actions have worked as expected by lowering the key interest rate benchmarks in the economy to historically low levels, which has been transmitted through to historically low borrowing rates for households and businesses, as well as governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Predicting bond betas using macro-finance variables. • We find differences in prediction across government, investment grade corporate and high-yield corporate bond betas. • The complete subset regressions (CSR) method performs well in predicting bond betas. • There are important portfolio and policy making implications. We predict bond betas conditioning on a number of macro-finance variables. We explore differences across long-term government bonds, investment grade corporate bonds, and high yield corporate bonds. We conduct out-of-sample forecasting using the new approach of combining predictor variables through complete subset regressions (CSR). We consider the robustness of CSR forecasts across the 1-month, 3-month, and 12-month forecasting horizons. The CSR method performs well in predicting bond betas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The euro area recently experienced a prolonged period of weak economic activity and very low inflation. This paper reviews models of business cycle stabilization with an eye to formulating lessons for policy in the euro area. According to standard models, after a large recessionary shock accommodative monetary and fiscal policy together may be necessary to stabilize economic activity and inflation. The paper describes practical ways for the euro area to be able to implement an effective monetary-fiscal policy mix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated both the January effect and the “sell-in-May-and-go-away” anomaly in government bond returns. It also tested whether the two seasonal patterns impact the performance of fixed-income factor strategies related to volatility, credit risk, value, and momentum premia. Our examination of government bond markets in 25 countries for years 1992–2016 proved that both the bond returns and factor premia had remained unaffected by the January and “sell-in-May” effects. These seasonal patterns in government bond markets appear to be merely a statistical artifact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the momentum effect in factor premia in international government bond markets. The investigations are based on a range of fixed-income factor strategies related to volatility, credit risk, value, and momentum that are tested in a sample of data from 25 countries for the years 1992–2016. We demonstrate a strong and robust long-run performance persistence in the returns on factor portfolios of government bonds. Furthermore, our results support the view that the momentum in factor premia is driven by cross-sectional differences in expected returns on various factors rather than by behavioral overreaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the price impact of different components of liquidity throughout the lifetime of the U.S. Treasury bond. Using the GovPX dataset, we provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of the impact of several liquidity proxies on the relative liquidity premium of these securities. The findings show that the liquidity premium has a deterministic main age-based component. This aging effect extends beyond the simple on-the-run/off-the-run effect. There is also a stochastic component of the liquidity premium that depends on the unexpected value of microstructure-based liquidity proxies and the current market- and bond-level conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fragmentation in the sovereign bond market of the Eurozone involves divergences in borrowing costs and undermines the stability of the monetary union. In this paper, we propose an indicator of fragmentation between government bonds of the core and peripheral European countries. Using a regime-switching cointegration model, we identify the absence of fragmentation as periods where the bond yields of the two groups share a common stochastic trend in the long-run. The results show that the indicator of fragmentation is responsive to systemic stress events and is negatively related to the ECB's monetary policy actions. • We propose an indicator of fragmentation in the sovereign bond market of the Eurozone. • We identify fragmentation via a regime-switching cointegration model. • Fragmentation increases with systemic stress events. • Fragmentation reduces with the ECB's monetary policy actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European government bond market segmentation has not been extensively investigated. I contribute to this scant literature by studying the market microstructure of the Italian government bond market, the largest one in the eurozone. Using a sequential trade model, I analyze the probability of informed trading (PIN) in the parallel trading of the same bond on two secondary electronic platforms: the inter-dealer MTS and the dealer-to-customer BondVision; an aspect that has never been investigated before. I find that the PIN is significantly lower in the dealer-to-customer segment than in the inter-dealer one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The sovereign debt crisis in the euro area has not yet been solved and recent developments in Spain and Italy have further deteriorated the situation. In this paper we develop a new approach to analyze the ongoing Eurozone crisis. Firstly, we use Maximum Spanning Trees to analyze the topological properties of government bond rates’ dynamics. Secondly, we combine the information given by both Maximum and Minimum Spanning Trees to obtain a measure of market dissimilarity or disintegration. Thirdly, we extend this measure to include a convenient distance not limited to the interval [0, 2]. Our empirical results show that Maximum Spanning Tree gives an adequate description of the separation of the euro area into two distinct groups: those countries strongly affected by the crisis and those that have remained resilient during this period. The measures of market dissimilarity also reveal a persistent separation of these two groups and, according to our second measure, this separation strongly increased during the period July 2009–March 2012. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In the wake of the financial crisis, sovereign debt crisis has emerged and is severely affecting some countries in the European Union, threatening the viability of the euro and even the EU itself. This paper applies recent developments in econophysics, in particular the minimum spanning tree approach and the associate hierarchical tree, to analyze the asynchronization between the four most affected countries and other resilient countries in the euro area. For this purpose, daily government bond yield rates are used, covering the period from April 2007 to October 2010, thus including yield rates before, during and after the financial crises. The results show an increasing separation of the two groups of euro countries with the deepening of the government bond crisis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This note provides the first empirical assessment of the dynamic interrelation between government bond spreads and their associated credit default swaps (CDS). We use data for the Southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) that found themselves with a problematic public sector in the dawn of the recent financial distress. We find that CDS prices Granger-cause government bond spreads after the eruption of the 2007 sub-prime crisis. Feedback causality is detected during periods of financial and economic turmoil, thereby indicating that high risk aversion tends to perplex the transmission mechanism between CDS prices and government bond spreads. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The concept of a minimum spanning tree (MST) is used to study patterns of comovements for a set of twenty government bond market indices for developed North American, European, and Asian countries. We show how the MST and its related hierarchical tree evolve over time and describe the dynamic development of market linkages. Over the sample period, 1993–2008, linkages between markets have decreased somewhat. However, a subset of European Union (EU) bond markets does show increasing levels of comovements. The evolution of distinct groups within the Eurozone is also examined. The implications of our findings for portfolio diversification benefits are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the turn-of-the-month (TOM) and intramonth anomalies in government bond returns. In particular, we examine whether the TOM and intramonth effects exist in government bond markets, and moreover, whether these anomalies are related to the release of macroeconomic news as suggested in recent stock market studies. Using data on the 2-year and 10-year US Treasury Notes and German government bonds, we document a modest TOM effect in government bond returns. This effect does not disappear after controlling for the release of macroeconomic announcements, thereby suggesting that the origin of the TOM effect is not necessarily the same across asset classes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We derive a model for the valuation of government bonds subject to liquidation risk. We show that the value of a government bond depends on the term structures of the conditional probability of liquidation facing the portfolio manager, the bid-ask spread, and the riskless rate. We derive an expression for the elasticity of a government bond adjusted for the risk of liquidation with respect to shifts in the riskless term structure of interest rates. Failing to adjust elasticity for liquidation risk may be costly for bond portfolio managers utilizing active, rate-anticipation duration strategies based on Macaulay duration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We explore the relationship between COVID-19 and sovereign term spreads in global markets. • The evolution of the pandemic significantly affects sovereign bond markets. • Growth in the number of confirmed cases increases the government term spreads. • The effect is independent of government policy and monetary responses to COVID-19. • The results are robust to different considerations and sensitivity analyses. We explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the term structure of interest rates. Using data from developed and emerging countries, we demonstrate that the expansion of the disease significantly affects sovereign bond markets. The growth of confirmed cases significantly widens the term spreads of government bonds. The effect is independent of government policy and monetary responses to COVID-19 and robust to many considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic risk is a multi-layer network phenomenon. Layers represent various types of direct financial exposure of various types, including interbank liabilities and derivative- or foreign exchange exposures. An important layer of systemic risk emerges through common asset holdings of financial institutions. Strongly overlapping portfolios lead to similar exposures that are caused by price movements of the underlying financial assets. Based on the knowledge of individual portfolio holdings of financial agents, we quantify the systemic risk of overlapping portfolios. We then present an optimization procedure whereby we minimize the systemic risk in a given financial market by optimally rearranging overlapping portfolio networks. The optimization is performed under the constraints that the expected returns and risk of the individual portfolios are unchanged. We explicitly demonstrate the power of the method on the overlapping portfolio network of sovereign exposure between major European banks, using data from the European Banking Authority stress test of 2016. Systemic risk can be reduced by more than a factor of two, without any detrimental effects for the individual banks. These results are confirmed by a simple simulation of fire sales in the government bond market. In particular, we show that the contagion probability is dramatically reduced in the optimized network. We comment on the efficiency of the network optimization approach in comparison to equity-injection-based ways to reduce systemic risk. To obtain the same risk levels that are obtained in the network optimization, it would be necessary to increase the actual available capital by two thirds. This shows the immense potential of network-based systemic risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]