We assess some stylised facts on long-term interest rates, using weekly and daily data. Then we explore how these events were interpreted in capital markets by reviewing weekly notes and newsletters of four major investment banks for 2002, and we provide a chronology of major fiscal policy events throughout the year. The fiscal policy events are classified either as country specific actions and decisions related to the implementation of the surveillance procedures (“type 1” fiscal events), or as announcements of policy targets and discussions on the European institutional framework (“type 2” fiscal events). The relation of some of these selected fiscal events with long-term government yields, the implied.
