A disturbing feature of the conventional objective function for intertemporal decisions under uncertainty is that the agent's attitudes toward intertemporal substitution and risk aversion are entangled. This paper shows that, in contrast to common perception, the two attitudes can be completely...

This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

House prices have risen quite sharply since 2000. Coming on the heels of a stock market crash, many analysts have raised the specter of collapse in house prices and have conjured up dire consequences from such a collapse. This article examines the extent of the house price rise, whether there...

If asset returns are predictable, then rational expectations and the arithmetic of budget constraints together imply that these predictable changes in returns should affect current consumption. This paper presents a new framework linking consumption, income, and observable assets to expectations...

I present a consumption-based asset pricing model that is capable of matching the empirically observed Sharpe ratios of the aggregate market portfolio as well as the Fama-French value-minus-growth portfolio. The model also matches the level of the risk-free rate and the equity premium with a...

In this paper we take an innovative econometric look at the Euro Zone Sovereign Debt Crisis. We are particularly interested in understanding which determinants have led investors to ask for higher yields on sovereign debt from the Euro shatter belt. We dismiss the definition of speculation...

Executive Summary included in the Paper

An extensive literature has analyzed the implications of hidden shifts in the dividend growth rate. However, corresponding research on learning about growth persistence is completely lacking. Hidden persistence is a novel way to introduce long-run risk into standard business-cycle models of...

What matters to economic decision-making is whether the economy has become more or less predictable. People and businesses use information around them to form judgements about what might happen in the future. The rise in uncertainty might be associated with increased concern about extreme...