If current projections of future budget surpluses materialize, investing in Treasury securities--an asset class with which investors have long been familiar--could eventually become a thing of the past. In this paper, I examine the extent to which investors' portfolio allocation decisions are...

This paper describes the construction of a financial stress index. This stress index differs from other indexes in that it incorporates the co-movement and volatility of financial series as well as the levels of the series. Our index also uses past experience more than others to guide the...

This paper explores the relationship between the health of the financial sector and the rest of the economy. We develop an index of financial sector health using a distance-to-default measure based on a Merton-style option pricing model. Our index spans over three decades and appears to capture...