Due to their underlying assumptions, the standard concepts of risk aversion and preference for the present are generally defined separately and represented by scalar measures, and this implies many shortcomings. More specifically, if measured by a scalar, the risk aversion remains unchanged,...

Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are in the process of becoming, liquid and extremelyinformative instruments of default risk. Yet, default swap market has severalnovel aspects that have not received much attention. In this paper we studyan aspect of CDS´s that relates to the prediction of financial...

We study the pricing of political uncertainty in a general equilibrium model of government policy choice. We find that political uncertainty commands a risk premium whose magnitude is larger in poorer economic conditions. Political uncertainty reduces the value of the implicit put protection...

We develop a simple overlapping generations model in which the young have a choice in investing in equities and index-linked bonds. Projections of share price uncertainty over a 30-year period show that the risk associated with such a long-term investment predicts an equity premium that matches...

In the years following the influential article of Poole (1970), many central banks reoriented their operating procedures to focus more on interest rates and less on monetary aggregates. The rapid restructuring of global financial markets was thought to have led to instability in standard...

We argue that emerging economies borrow short term due to the high risk premium charged by bondholders on long-term debt. First, we present a model where the debt maturity structure is the outcome of a risk sharing problem between the government and bondholders. By issuing long-term debt, the...

In models with a large number of agents who have constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) preferences, the absence of insurance markets for idiosyncratic labour income risk has no effect on the premium for aggregate risk if the distribution of idiosyncratic risk is independent of aggregate shocks....

We develop an institutional framework for central banks that try to pursue a stability-oriented monetary policy with the strategy of exchange rate targeting. Recent experience shows that a crucial element of this approach is to avoid destabilizing capital inflows. Policy makers can exert...

This paper proposes a panel data approach to modeling the risk premium in the term structure of interest rates. Specifically, we develop a fixed maturity/random time effects model that implies a time-invariant one-factor model. Our approach allows us to disentangle risk premia and unexpected...