The main aim of this paper is to assess whether there is a statistically significant environmental impact of cities within European countries. Second, starting from the estimated environmental impact of cities within European countries, the paper investigates whether cross-country variation can...

We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail price to changes in house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. Notably, these price responses are largest in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly renters....

We document that the recent house price experiences within an individual's social network affect her perceptions of the attractiveness of property investments, and through this channel have large effects on her housing market activity. Our data combine anonymized social network information from...

A wide range of aggregate data is used to examine the spatial variation in homeownership rates among a cross-section of 96 German planning regions. The analysis accounts for potential endogeneity of prices and affordability as well as for spatial dependence in homeownership levels. In addition...

How should one evaluate investment projects whose CCAPM betas are uncertain? This question is particularly crucial for projects yielding long-lasting impacts on the economy, as is the case for example for many green investments. We define the notion of a certainty equivalent beta. We show that...

This paper explores French assets returns predictability within a VAR setup. Using quarterly data from 1970Q4 to 2006Q4, it turns out that bonds, equities and bills returns are actually predictable. This feature implies that the investment horizon does indeed matter in the asset allocation. The...

A pay-as-you-go (paygo) pension program may provide intergenerational pooling of risks to individuals' labor and capital income over the life cycle. By means of a model that provides illuminating closed form solutions, we demonstrate that the magnitude of the optimal paygo program and the nature...

This paper examines global and regional stock market integration in Asia at both the aggregate and disaggregate (industry) level by applying the Phillips-Sul (2007) tests for panel and club convergence. The main findings can be summarised as follows. In the pre-2008 crisis period, no...

This paper proposes a novel test of zero pricing errors for the linear factor pricing model when the number of securities, N, can be large relative to the time dimension, T, of the return series. The test is based on Student t tests of individual securities and has a number of advantages over...

Whole life insurance plays an important role in household saving. However, empirical evidence on its determinants is scarce. This paper studies two natural experiments to identify the effects of tax incentives and bequest motives on life-insurance demand. An unanticipated tax reform in 2000...