A recursive test procedure is suggested that provides a mechanism for testing explosive behavior, date-stamping the origination and collapse of economic exuberance, and providing valid confidence intervals for explosive growth rates. The method involves the recursive implementation of a...

This paper examines the question whether information is contained in forecasts from DSGE models beyond that contained in lagged values, which are extensively used in the models. Four sets of forecasts are examined. The results are encouraging for DSGE forecasts of real GDP. The results suggest...

Inversion of the yield curve has come to be viewed as a leading recession indicator. Unsurprisingly, some recent instances of inversion have attracted attention from economic commentators and policymakers about possible impending recessions. Using a variety of time series models and recent...

Although typically modeled as a centralized firm decision, pricing often involves multiple organizational teams that have decision rights over specific pricing inputs. We study team input decisions using comprehensive data from a large U.S. airline. We document that pricing at a sophisticated...

We discuss how leverage can be monitored for institutions, individuals, and assets. While traditionally the interest rate has been regarded as the important feature of a loan, we argue that leverage is sometimes even more important. Monitoring leverage provides information about how risk builds...

This is the graduation speech I gave on receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Athens Economics and Business School. I talk about my Greek family, about how I got interested in economics, and then how in the 1990s I came to think about default, collateral, and leverage as the...

We show how the timing of financial innovation might have contributed to the mortgage bubble and then to the crash of 2007-2009. We show why tranching and leverage first raised asset prices and why CDS lowered them afterwards. This may seem puzzling, since it implies that creating a derivative...

We compare laboratory general equilibrium economies in which maintenance of a depreciating public facility is financed either by anonymous voluntary contributions or taxes. Agents individually allocate their private goods between consumption and investment in production. The experimental...

The use of equilibrium models in economics springs from the desire for parsimonious models of economic phenomena that take human reasoning into account. This approach has been the cornerstone of modern economic theory. We explain why this is so, extolling the virtues of equilibrium theory; then...

We use a laboratory experiment to compare general equilibrium economies in which agents individually allocate their private goods among consumption, investment in production, and replenishing/refurbishing a depreciating public facility in a dynamic game with long-term investment opportunities....