We show that price level stabilization is not optimal in an economy where agents have incomplete knowledge about the policy implemented and try to learn it. A systematically more accommodative policy than what agents expect generates short term gains without triggering an abrupt loss of...

This paper shows how to solve dynamic agency models by extending recursive Lagrangean techniques a la Marcet and Marimon (2009) to problems with hidden actions. The method has many advantages with respect to promised utilities approach (Abreu, Pearce and Stacchetti (1990)): it is a significant...

Does capital markets uncertainty affect the business cycle? We find that financial volatility predicts 30% of post-war economic activity in the United States, and that during the Great Moderation, aggregate stock market volatility explains, alone, up to 55% of real growth. In out-of-sample...

This paper studies asset markets in which ambiguity averse investors face Knightian uncertainty about expected payoffs. The same investors, however, might wish to resolve their uncertainty, although not risk, by just purchasing information. In these markets, uninformed and, hence, ambiguity...

Which pricing kernel restrictions are needed to make low dimensional Markov models consistent with given sets of predictions on aggregate stock-market fluctuations ? This paper develops theoretical test conditions addressing this and related reverse engineering issues arising within a fairly...

This paper introduces a no-arbitrage framework to assess how macroeconomic factors help explain the risk-premium agents require to bear the risk of .uctuations in stock market volatility. We develop a model in which return volatility and volatility risk-premia are stochastic and derive...