This paper uses the financial crisis of 2008 as a natural experiment to demonstrate that when measuring investment-cash flow sensitivity, the value of a firm's assets that can be used as collateral should be taken into account. Using panel data on U.S. firms from 1990 to 2011, it was found that...

This paper uses a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model to estimate the macroeconomic impact of a tax reform that replaces a corporate income tax (CIT) with a destination-based cash-flow tax (DBCFT). Two key channels are at play. The first channel is the shift from an income tax to a...

Are Bunds special? This paper estimates the 'Bund premium' as the difference in convenience yields between other sovereign safe assets and German government bonds adjusted for sovereign credit risk, liquidity and swap market frictions. A higher premium suggests less substitutability of sovereign...

This paper introduces the quantile regression- based Distance-to-Default to Probability of Default (DD-PD) mapping, which links individual firms' DD to their real world PD. Since changes in the DD depend on a handful of parameters, the mapping easily accommodates shocks arising from quantitative...

The deterioration in the U.S. net external position in recent years has been much smaller than the extensive net borrowing associated with large current account deficits would have suggested. This paper examines the sources of discrepancies between net borrowing and accumulation of net...

Using a new daily index of social unrest, we provide systematic evidence on the negative impact of social unrest on stock market performance. An average social unrest episode in an typical country causes a 1.4 percentage point drop in cumulative abnormal returns over a two-week event window....

We contrast how monetary policy affects intangible relative to tangible investment. We document that the stock prices of firms with more intangible assets react less to monetary policy shocks, as identified from Fed Funds futures movements around FOMC announcements. Consistent with the stock...

We provide a systematic analysis of the properties of individual returns to wealth using twelve years of population data from Norway's administrative tax records. We document a number of novel results. First, during our sample period individuals earn markedly different average returns on their...

A stochastic volatility model where volatility was driven solely by a latent variable called news was estimated for three stock indices. A Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm was used for estimating Bayesian parameters and filtering volatilities. Volatility persistence being close to one was...

Empirically, output and asset returns are highly positively correlated across the United States and the other major industrialized countries. Standard business cycle models that assume flexible prices and wages, in the Real Business Cycle tradition, have great difficulties explaining this fact....