The RATES function computes a column vector of (per-period, such as per-year) interest rates converted from one base to another. The arguments to the RATES function are as follows:

rates

is an column vector of rates that correspond to the old base. Elements should be positive.

oldfreq

is a scalar that represents the old base. If positive, it represents discrete compounding as the reciprocal of the number of compoundings per period. If zero, it represents continuous compounding. If -1, the rates represent discount factors. No other negative values are accepted.

newfreq

is a scalar that represents the new base. If positive, it represents discrete compounding as the reciprocal of the number of compoundings per period. If zero, it represents continuous compounding. If -1, the rates represent discount factors. No other negative values are accepted.

Let be the discount function, which is the present value of a unit amount to be received periods from now. The discount function can be expressed in three different ways:

with per-period discount factors :

with continuous compounding:

with discrete compounding:

where is the frequency, the reciprocal of the number of compoundings per period. The RATES function converts between these three representations.

For example, the following example produces the output shown in Figure 23.208:

rates = T(do(0.1, 0.3, 0.1));
oldfreq = 0;
newfreq = 0;
rates = rates(rates, oldfreq, newfreq);
print rates;