"This paper finds that, concurrent with the rapid growing index investment in commodities markets since early 2000s, futures prices of different commodities in the US became increasingly correlated with each other and this trend was significantly more pronounced for commodities in the two...

"Investors' option-implied fear measures - implied volatility (ATMIV) and put-call implied volatility ratios (P/C) - lead key macroeconomic variables such as industrial capacity utilization and short term interest rates by up to eight quarters. We show that this interaction between fear indices,...

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Social Security is widely believed to protect its recipients from inflation because benefits are indexed to the Consumer Price Index for...