This paper explores the quantitative impact of the Baby Boom on stock and bond returns. It constructs a neoclassical growth model with overlapping generations, in which agents make a portfolio decision over risky capital and safe bonds in zero net supply. The model has exogenous technology and...

To assess the potential of incomplete consumption insurance for explaining the equity premium and the risk-free rate of return, we use a Taylor series expansion of the individual's marginal utility of consumption around the conditional expectation of consumption and derive an approximate...

In this paper we consider a GARCH-in-Mean (GARCH-M) model based on the so-called z distribution. This distribution is capable of modeling moderate skewness and kurtosis typically encountered in financial return series, and the need to allow for skewness can be readily tested. We apply the new...

This paper incorporates the systematic risk of regime shifts into a general equilibrium model of the term structure of interest rates. The model shows that there is a new source of time-variation in bond term premiums in the presence of regime shifts. This new component is a regime-switching...

In this paper we ask the empirical question are bond covenants priced? Consistent with the Costly Contracting Hypothesis (CCH) developed by Smith and Warner (1979), we find that they are. We document a negative relation between the promised yield on corporate debt issues and the presence of...

Many securities are, to a certain extent, subject to credit risk in one way or another. Both the financial institutions and regulators are keen to have their credit risk exposures well managed. In order to fulfill their needs, the market for credit derivatives has become one of the fast growing...

This paper uses the flexible approach of Hamilton (2001) to investigate the nature of nonlinearities in the term structure. The paper reports clear evidence of nonlinearity, in contrast to the affine term structure model and consistent with recent claims in the literature. We find that there is...

I develop a Markov model of samrt money chasing past winning funds while taking into account associated costs. The model also allows market capital entry and exit. The steady-state capital allocations re derived using constant transition probabilities. The results sugget that down side risk is...

This paper applies recent tests of stochastic dominance of several orders proposed by Linton, Maasoumi and Whang (2003) to reexamine the equity premium puzzle. An advantage of this nonparametric framework is that it provides a means to assess whether the existence of a premium is due to an...