Emerging market crises are characterized by large swings in both macroeconomic fundamentals and asset prices. The economic significance of observed movements in macroeconomic variables is obscured by the brief and extreme nature of crises. In this paper we propose to study the macroeconomic...

This paper reviews the recent literature on monetary policy rules. We exposit the monetary policy design problem within a simple baseline theoretical framework. We then consider the implications of adding various real world complications. Among other things, we show that the optimal policy...

This article develops two hypotheses about economically-relevant values of Christian believers, according to which Protestants should work more and more effectively, as in the “work ethic” argument of Max Weber, or display a stronger “social ethic” that would lead them to monitor each...

This paper reconsiders the empirical evidence on the asymmetric output effects of monetary policy. Asymmetric effects is a common feature of many theoretical models, and there are many different versions of such asymmetries. We concentrate on the distinctions between positive and negative...

We estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 125 countries between 1970 and 1998. We estimate poverty rates and headcounts by integrating the density function below the $1/day and $2/day poverty lines. We find that poverty rates decline...

We use aggregate GDP data and within-country income shares for the period 1970-1998 to assign a level of income to each person in the world. We then estimate the gaussian kernel density function for the worldwide distribution of income. We compute world poverty rates by integrating the density...

An affine asset pricing model in which agents have rational but heterogeneous expectations about future asset prices is developed. We estimate the model using data on bond yields and individual survey responses from the Survey of Professional Forecasters and perform a novel three-way...

Major bubble episodes are rare events. In this paper, we examine what factors might cause some asset price bubbles to become very large. We recreate, in a laboratory setting, some of the specific institutional features investors in the South Sea Company faced in 1720. Several factors have been...

We introduce a new dynamic trading strategy based on the systematic misspricing of U.S. companies sponsoring Defined Benefit pension plans. This portfolio produces an average return of 1.51% monthly between 1989 and 2004, with a Sharpe Ratio of 0.26. The returns of the strategy are not explained...

In this paper we explore the mechanisms that allow securities analysts to value companies in contexts of Knightian uncertainty, that is, in the face of information that is unclear, subject to unforeseeable contingencies or to multiple interpretations. We address this question with a...