We explore the business cycle implications of expectation shocks and of two well-known psychological biases, optimismand overconfidence. The expectations of optimistic agents are biased toward good outcomes, whereas overconfident agentsoverestimate the precision of the signals that they receive....

Market participants routinely take advantage of the failure of uncovered interest rate parity to speculate in currency markets. Perhaps the most widely used currency speculation strategy is the carry trade. In this article we take the perspective of an individual currency trader and document the...

This paper documents four basic facts about investment goods and investment prices. First, investment has a very significant nontradable component in the form of construction services. Second, distributions services (wholesaling, retailing, and transportation) are much less important for...