I use micro data to quantify key features of U.S. firm financing. In particular, I establish that a substantial 35% of firms' investment is funded using financial markets. I then construct a dynamic equilibrium model that matches these features and fit the model to business cycle data using...

I show that, due to imperfect risk sharing, aggregate shocks to uncertainty about idiosyncratic return on investment generate economic contractions with elevated risk premia and a decrease in the risk-free rate. I present a tractable real business cycle model in which firms experience...

The recent financial crisis has focused attention on identifying and measuring systemic risk. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to estimate the portfolio composition of banks as function of daily interbank trades and stock returns. While banks’ assets are reported to regulators...

We estimate asset pricing models with multiple risks: long-run growth, long-run volatility, habit, and a residual. The Bayesian estimation accounts for the entire likelihood of consumption, dividends, and the price-dividend ratio. We find that the residual represents at least 80% of the variance...

We estimate a reduced-form model of credit risk that incorporates stochastic volatility in default intensity via stochastic time-change. Our Bayesian MCMC estimation method overcomes nonlinearity in the measurement equation and state-dependent volatility in the state equation. We implement on...

Yes, they can. I propose a new method to detect credit booms and busts from multivariate systems -- monetary Bayesian vector autoregressions. When observed credit is systematically higher than credit forecasts justified by real economic activity variables, a positive credit gap emerges. The...

We study the asset pricing implications of a general equilibrium Lucas endowment economy inhabited by two agents with habit formation preferences. Preferences are modeled either as internal or external habits. We allow for agents' heterogeneity in relative risk aversion and habit strength. We...

We confront the generalized recursive smooth ambiguity aversion preferences of Klibanoff, Marinacci, and Mukerji (2005, 2009) with data using Bayesian methods introduced by Gallant and McCulloch (2009) to close two existing gaps in the literature. First, we use macroeconomic and financial data...

We study how banks manage their default risk to optimally negotiate quantities and prices of contracts in over-the-counter markets. We show that costly actions exerted by banks to reduce their default probabilities are inefficient. Negative externalities due to counterparty concentration may...

Using only daily data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety (FTS) episodes for 23 countries. On average, FTS days comprise less than 3% of the sample, and bond returns exceed equity returns by 2.5 to 4%. The majority of FTS events are country-specific not...