Abstract (eng)
The main goal of this thesis was finding the real determinants behind government bond yield performances during the tested time period and all relative and absolute yield levels. Therefore, the yield values of eight member states of the European Union have been analyzed and out of a set of 44 possible candidates, the most important determinants were chosen. The test-subjects were Germany, France, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. This country selection covers economically sound economies, as well as the known PIIGS states, which have suffered heavily in the recent debt crises. Several variable selection procedures have been implemented: Forward Selection, Backwards Elimination, Robust Regression, Lasso and the Subsets method. With the help of a point based scoreboard system, the main determinants were selected. The quality of the chosen variables was tested by generating yield levels based on the selected variables and comparing the real yields with its calculated counterparts. The results implied that government bond yields can be explained by a small set of certain determinants. However, every country and yield level renders different significant variables. These findings indicate that the yield curves are depending on some factors quite heavily, but in order to confidently predict yield developments, more research, especially into the regression equation used for calculating future yields, is necessary.