A central puzzle for asset pricing theory is that stock prices are much more volatile than corporate dividends. One possible resolution is to modify standard models by introducing stochastic discount factors that induce large variation in prices for relatively smooth sequences of dividends. But...

Using US quarterly post-war data, this paper documents the existence of two common trends among non-housing non durable and housing consumption, financial and real estate wealth, and labour income (a proxy for human wealth). The first equilibrium relationship reflects the stationarity of the...

Abstract: Focusing on observable default risk's role in loan terms and the subsequent consequences for household behavior, this paper shows that lenders increasingly used risk-based pricing of interest rates in consumer loan markets during the mid-1990s. It tests three resulting predictions....

This paper develops a simple competitive model of CEO pay. It appears to explain much of the rise in CEO compensation in the US economy, without assuming managerial entrenchment, mishandling of options, or theft. CEOs have observable managerial talent and are matched to assets in a competitive...

This paper analyzes the dispersion in consumption and earnings over the life-cycle. We first reexamine these facts by considering US data for the period (1980-2000) using alternative price deflators. We find that consumption and earnings dispersion increase with age, but that the increase in...

We study the reaction of nancial markets to aggregate liquidity shocks when traders face cognition limits. While each financial institution recovers from the shock at a random time, the trader representing the institution observes this recovery with a delay, reflecting the time it takes to...

We study the reaction of nancial markets to aggregate liquidity shocks when traders face cognition limits. While each nancial institution recovers from the shock at a random time, the trader representing the institution observes this recovery with a delay, re ecting the time it takes to collect...