Under the assumption of bounded rationality, economic agents learn from their past mistaken predictions by combining new and old information to form new beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the policy-maker, by affecting private agents' learning process, determines the speed at...

The information content of stock prices is analysed without imposing strong restrictions on traders' preferences and the distribution of dividends. Noise in the information contained in equilibrium prices arises from endogenous asset supply, which offsets price movements due to informed trading....

From a financial standpoint, the mechanics of the carry trade has been recently examined in Brunnermeier et al. (2009). They showed that shocks to interest rate differentials lead to carry trade activity and to significant reactions in the bilateral exchange rates vis-a-vis the US dollar that...

This paper investigates the relationship between futures prices and financial investments in derivatives of the main agricultural commodities. We first provide a broad picture of how these markets function and how they have evolved, showing that traders who deal mostly in commodity index...

This paper analyzes the impact of news on several Italian financial variables, paying particular attention to the effect on the conditional volatility of these variables. The analysis spans a period of great financial and political turbulence in Italy, including the rapid succession of three...

This paper explores the implications of systemic risk in Credit Structured Finance (CSF). Risk measurement issues loomed large during the 2007-08 financial crisis, as the massive, unprecedented number of downgrades of AAA senior bond tranches inflicted severe losses on banks, calling into...

Theory suggests that uninsurable income risk induces individuals to accumulate assets as a precautionary reserve of value. Most assets, however, bear rate of return risk, that can be diversified only if every asset is traded by a large number of individuals and arbitrage is frictionless. Using...

We study the impact of the publication of central banks� macroeconomic projections on the dynamic properties of an economy where (i) private agents have incomplete information and form their expectations using recursive learning algorithms; (ii) the short-term nominal interest rate is set...

We analyse a simplified New-Keynesian model with an unobserved aggregate cost-push shock in which firms and the central bank have different information about the shock. We consider a linear policy rule where a pure inflation targeting central bank decides how much to react to the shock given its...

This paper evaluates the use of risk-neutral probability density functions implied in 3-month interest-rate futures options to assess market perceptions regarding future monetary policy moves options allow the information content implied in simpler derivatives to be extended by providing...