An economic tracking portfolio is a portfolio of assets with returns that track an economic variable. Monthly returns on stocks and bonds are useful in forecasting post-war US output, consumption, labor income, inflation, stock returns, bond returns, and Treasury bill returns. These forecasting...

We evaluate the performance of different models for the covariance structure of stock returns, focusing on their use for optimal portfolio selection. Comparisons are based on forecasts of future covariances as well as the out-of-sample volatility of optimized portfolios from each model. A few...

Evidence from a broad panel of countries shows little overall relation between income inequality and rates of growth and investment. However, for growth, higher inequality tends to retard growth in poor countries and encourage growth in richer places. The Kuznets curve-whereby inequality first...

If household portfolios are constrained by borrowing and short-sales restrictions asset markets, then alternative retirement savings systems may affect household welfare by relaxing these constraints. This paper uses a calibrated partial-equilibrium model of optimal life-cycle portfolio choice...

In this article, we examine the effect of the imperfect mobility of goods on international risk sharing and, through that, on the investment in risky projects, welfare and growth. We find that the welfare gain of financial market openness is not monotonic with respect to investors' risk aversion...

This paper develops a tractable stochastic overlapping generations model to analyze the equilibrium equity premium and growth rate of the capital stock in the presence of a defined-benefit Social Security system. If the Social Security Trust Fund increases the share of its portfolio held in...

It depends. If volatility fluctuates in a forecastable way, then volatility forecasts are useful for risk management; hence the interest in volatility forecastability in the risk management literature. Volatility forecastability, however, varies with horizon, and different horizons are relevant...

Evidence suggests that some pollutants follow an inverse-U-shaped pattern relative to countries' incomes. This relationship has been called the out a simple and straight-forward static model of the microfoundations of the pollution-income relationship. We show that the environmental Kuznets...

Recent models of banking under asymmetric information argue that depositors penalize banks that offer high-risk deposits. Focusing on New York City banks in the 1920's and 1930's, this study examines how banks manage risk during normal times and in response to severe shocks. We develop and apply...

A satisfactory account of the postwar growth experience of the United States should be able to come to terms with the following three facts: 1. Since the early 1970's there has been a slump in the advance of productivity. 2. The price of new equipment has fallen steadily over the postwar period....