Changing interest rates constitute one of the major risk sources for banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions. Modeling the term-structure movements of interest rates is a challenging task. This volume gives an introduction to the mathematics of term-structure models in continuous time. It includes practical aspects for fixed-income markets such as day-count conventions, duration of coupon-paying bonds and yield curve construction; arbitrage theory; short-rate models; the Heath-Jarrow-Morton methodology; consistent term-structure parametrizations; affine diffusion processes and option pricing with Fourier transform; LIBOR market models; and credit risk.

The focus is on a mathematically straightforward but rigorous development of the theory. Students, researchers and practitioners will find this volume very useful. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises, that provides source for homework and exam questions. Readers are expected to be familiar with elementary Ito calculus, basic probability theory, and real and complex analysis."

Changing interest rates constitute one of the major risk sources for banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions. Modeling the term-structure movements of interest rates is a challenging task. This volume gives an introduction to the mathematics of term-structure models in continuous time. It includes practical aspects for fixed-income markets such as day-count conventions, duration of coupon-paying bonds and yield curve construction; arbitrage theory; short-rate models; the Heath-Jarrow-Morton methodology; consistent term-structure parametrizations; affine diffusion processes and option pricing with Fourier transform; LIBOR market models; and credit risk.

The focus is on a mathematically straightforward but rigorous development of the theory. Students, researchers and practitioners will find this volume very useful. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises, that provides source for homework and exam questions. Readers are expected to be familiar with elementary Ito calculus, basic probability theory, and real and complex analysis."

Bond markets differ in one fundamental aspect from standard stock markets. While the latter are built up to a finite number of trade assets, the underlying basis of a bond market is the entire term structure of interest rates: an infinite-dimensional variable which is not directly observable. On the empirical side, this necessitates curve-fitting methods for the daily estimation of the term structure. Pricing models, on the other hand, are usually built upon stochastic factors representing the term structure in a finite-dimensional state space. Written for readers with knowledge in mathematical finance (in particular interest rate theory) and elementary stochastic analysis, this research monograph has threefold aims: to bring together estimation methods and factor models for interest rates, to provide appropriate consistency conditions and to explore some important examples.