"We investigate the information content of inter- transaction time and find that it varies both across stocks and over time. On average, inter-transaction time is found to be informative whenever stocks are sufficiently traded. The magnitude of the information content is found to be larger for...

This article shows that the "risk premium" shock in Smets and Wouters (2007) can be interpreted as a structural shock to the demand for safe and liquid assets such as short-term US Treasury securities. Several implications of this interpretation are discussed.