Interest-indexed bonds

Interest indexation. Interest-indexed bonds have been issued in Australia, although not since 1987. They pay a coupon fixed rate at a real—inflation-adjusted—interest rate. They also pay a principal adjustment (equal to the percentage change in the CPI from the issue date times the principal amount) every period. The inflation adjustment is thus fully paid out as it occurs, and no adjustment to the principal repayment at maturity is needed. 

Capital indexation. Capital-indexed bonds have been issued in the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Their coupon rates are specified in real terms, meaning that the coupon paid guarantees the real amount. For example, if the coupon is stated as 2 percent, what the buyer really gets is 2 percent after adjustment for inflation. Each period, this rate is applied to the inflation-adjusted principal amount to produce the coupon payment amount. At maturity, the principal repayment is the product of the bond s nominal value times the cumulative change in the index since issuance. Compared with interest-indexed bonds of similar maturity, these bonds have longer durations and lower reinvestment risk. 

Current pt. Current-pay bonds have been issued in Turkey. They are similar to interest-indexed bonds in that their redemption payments at maturity are not adjusted for inflation. They differ, however, in their term cash flows. Current-pay bonds pay an inflation-adjusted coupon plus an indexed amount that is related to the principal. In effect, they are inflation-indexed floating-rate notes. 

The drawbacks of each of these approaches are apparent. A rather more valid and sound approach is to constmct a term structure of the real interest rates, which would indicate, in exactly the same way that the conventional forward rate curve does for nominal rates, the market s expectatimis rat future inflation rates. In countries where there are liquid markets in both conventional and inflation-indexed bmids, we can observe a nominal and a real yield curve. It then becomes possible to estimate both a conventional and a real term structure using these allows us to create pairs of hypothetical conventional and indexed bonds that have identical maturity dates, for any point on the term structure. We could then apply the break-even approach to any pair of bonds... 

Index-linked bonds often pay interest semiannually. Certain long-dated investors, such as fund managers whose liabilities include inflation-indexed annuities, may be interested in indexed bonds that pay on a quarterly or even monthly basis. 

There are five basic methods of linking the cash flows from a bond to an inflation index interest indexation, capital indexation, zero-coupon indexation, annuity indexation, and current pay. Which method is chosen depends on the requirements of the issuers and of the investors they wish to attract. The principal factors considered in making this choice, according to Deacon and Derry (1998), are duration, reinvestment risk, and tax treatment. 

Observing the trading patterns of a liquid market in inflation-indexed bonds enables analysts to draw conclusions about nominal versus real interest rates and to construct an inflation term structure. Such analysis is problematic, since conventional and indexed bonds typically differ considerably in liquidity. Nevertheless, as explained above, it is usually possible to infer market estimates of inflation expectations from the difference between the yields of the two types of bonds. 

Essentially, the Fisher identity describes the relationship between nominal and real interest rates. Assuming a value for the risk premium p, the two bond price equations—one for a conventional bond and one for an indexed bond—can be linked using (12.15) and solved as a set of simultaneous equations to obtain values for the real interest rate and the expected inflation rate. 

Where a liquid market in indexed bonds exists across a reasonable maturity term structure, it is possible to construct a term structure of inflation rates. In essence, the process involves constructing the nominal and real interest rate term structures, then using them to infer an inflation term structure. This, in turn, can be used to calculate a forward expected inflation rate for any term or a forward inflation curve in the same way that a forward interest rate curve is constructed. 

A more interesting index, but one more difficult to apply, is the bond strain index, B, which compares the observed and predicted bond valences by summing the squares of the deviation over all m bonds (24) ... 

In order to locate items of interest in the book, the subject index lists, in addition to chemical operations, types of compounds rather than specific compounds (with a few exceptions). If, for example, readers do not find what they are looking for under the entry fluoroolefins , they may try olefins , double bonds, additions of , etc. 

The electron affinity of the carbocations as measured by red is a useful index for the stability of the carbocations. It is of great interest to correlate the occurrence of three principal reactions between a carbocation and a carbanion, i.e. covalent bond formation (36), single-electron transfer (37) and salt formation (38), with the magnitude of the E ed for the carbocations. 

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