This paper reassesses the pattern of unemployment in interwar Britain from a microeconomic perspective. A 10 per cent sample of some 27,000 case record cards completed in 1929-31 as part of the New Survey of London Life and Labour is used as a basis for cross-section analysis of unemployment...

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...

A popular suggestion among emerging or transition economies is to 'dollarize' or 'euro-ize'; that is to adopt the currency of a larger, richer neighbour in order to import the monetary discipline and financial stability of that neighbour. This paper examines the pros and cons of that suggestion...

A single variable describes, day-by-day, what investors think about the state of Brazil's economy: the Brazilian component of the Emerging Market Bond Index, the Embi spread. This spread is the difference between the yield on a dollar-denominated bond issued by the Brazilian government and a...