We propose a clientele-based model of the yield curve and optimal maturity structure of government debt. Clienteles are generations of agents at different lifecycle stages in an overlapping-generations economy. An optimal maturity structure exists in the absence of distortionary taxes and...

The fraction of newly-originated mortgages that are of the adjustable-rate (ARM) versus the fixed-rate (FRM) type exhibits a surprising amount of time variation. A simple utility framework of mortgage choice points to the bond risk premium as theoretical determinant: when the bond risk premium...

In this paper, we develop an equilibrium model for stock market liquidity and its impact on asset prices when constant market presence is costly. We show that even when agents' trading needs are perfectly matched, costly market presence prevents them from synchronizing their trades and hence...

We study the economic sources of stock-bond return comovements and its time variation using a dynamic factor model. We identify the economic factors employing a semi-structural regime-switching model for state variables such as interest rates, inflation, the output gap, and cash flow growth. We...

What is the best way to incorporate a risk premium into the discount rate schedule for a real investment project with uncertain payoffs? The standard CAPM formula suggests a beta-weighted average of the return on a safe investment and the mean return on an economy-wide representative risky...

Despite a large and growing theoretical literature on flights to safety, there does not appear to exist an empirical characterization of flight-to-safety (FTS) episodes. Using only data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety episodes for 23 countries. On...

We study a competitive credit market in which lenders with partial knowledge of loan repayment use one of three decision criteria - maximization of expected utility, maximin, or minimax regret - to make lending decisions. Lenders allocate endowments between loans and a safe asset, while...

When limited commitment hinders unsecured credit, assets help by serving as collateral. We study models where assets differ in pledgability - the extent to which they can be used to secure loans - and hence liquidity. Although many previous analyses of imperfect credit focus on producers, we...

Over the past couple of decades, and especially since the financial crisis in 2008-09, real interest rates have collapsed. For much of the past two years they have been negative, but they have been trending down for some while. But how far have real rates fallen? This note computes a measure of...

Identification problems arise naturally in forward-looking models when agents observe more than economists. We illustrate the problem in several New Keynesian and macro-finance models in which the Taylor rule includes a shock unseen by economists. We show that identification of the rule's...