HEATH–JARROW–MORTON INTEREST RATE DYNAMICS AND APPROXIMATELY CONSISTENT FORWARD RATE CURVES

We study a finite-dimensional approach to the Heath–Jarrow–Morton model for interest rate and introduce a notion of approximate consistency for a family of functions in a deterministic and stochastic framework. This amounts to asking the decrease of the minimum distance in least squares sense. We start from a general linearly parameterized set of functions and extend the theory to a nonlinear Nelson–Siegel family. Necessary and sufficient condition to have approximately consistency are given as well as a criterion of stability for the approximation.