Various economic theories are available to explain the existence of credit and default cycles. There remains empirical ambiguity, however, as to whether or these cycles coincide. Recent papers_new suggest by their empirical research set-up that they do, or at least that defaults and credit...

We study the relation between the credit cycle and macro-economic fundamentals in an intensity-based framework. Using rating transition and default data of U.S. corporates from Standard and Poor’s over the period 1980-2005 we directly estimate the credit cycle from the micro rating data. We...

Using US data from June 1984 to July 1999, we show that the impact of firm-specificcharacteristics like size and book-to-price on future excess stock returns varies considerably overtime. The impact can be either positive or negative at different times. This time variation ispartially...

What explains apparent price rigidity over the business cycle? This paper shows that price fluctuations may be hidden in prices of add ons. Using 10 years of extended warranty data from a nationwide Canadian retailer, we show that extended warranty prices respond strongly to changes in local...

When the financial positions of pension funds worsen, regulations prescribe that pension funds reduce the gap between their assets (invested contributions) and their liabilities (accumulated pension promises). This paper quantifies the business cycle effects and distributional implications of...

This paper analyzes the determinants of lay-offs, job-to-job movements and totalseparations with a unique data set that combines information on individual firmsand their workers. We are in particular interested in whether the lay-offpolicy of firms can explain the relatively high level of...

In this paper, I study the wage a firm sets to attract high abilityworkers (hipo's) in situationsof unemployment. I show that the higher unemployment, the larger afirm's incentives to sorthigh and low ability workers. Moreover, workers will signal their(high) ability in situationsof (high)...

We find that investor sentiment should affect a firm's employment policy in a world with moral hazard and noise traders. Consistent with the model's predictions, we show that higher sentiment among US investors leads to: (1) higher employment growth worldwide; (2) lower labor productivity, as the...

The COVID-19 crisis may have widely and permanently altered the labor market through the demand for skills. Crises tend to accelerate technological change. Previous recent crises were characterized by an acceleration of automation, which generally led to a decrease in middle-income jobs with...