The new Credit Risk Indicator (CRI) based on credit rating migration matrices is introduced. We demonstrate strong correlation between CRI and a number of defaults through several business cycles. The new model for the simulation of the annual number of defaults, based on the 1st quarter CRI...

The initiative to capture the information content behind the rise and fall of the business cycle has popularized the study of leading indicators. Many of the foreign experiences shared by economically advanced countries reveal that the leading indicator approach works well as a short-term...

I present evidence that higher frequency measures of inflation expectations outperform lower frequency measures of inflation expectations in tests of accuracy, predictive power, and rationality. For decades, the academic literature has focused on three survey measures of expected inflation: the...

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...

This paper develops a macroeconomic model of the interaction between consumer debt and firm debt over the business cycle. I incorporate interest rate spreads generated by firm and household loan default risk into a real business cycle model. I estimate the model on US aggregate data. This allows...

Backus, Kehoe and Kydland (BKK 1992) showed that if international capital markets are complete, consumption growth correlations across countries should be higher than their corresponding output growth correlations. In stark contrast to the theory, however, in actual data the consumption growth...

Several studies attributed the rise of household bankruptcy in the past two decades to the decline of social stigma associated with default. Stigma explanations, however, cannot account for the increase of credit availability during this period. I try to explain both of these facts as a result...

Economic growth data does not show how such growth was achieved. Was it based on income growth and consumption spending levels or was it based on borrowings to extend the income levels? The question is vital for deciding which economic tools work best for correcting imbalances. The main...

Following the seminal contribution of Kiyotaki and Moore (1997), the role of collateral constraints for business cycle fluctuations has been highlighted by several authors and collateralized debt is becoming a popular feature of business cycle models. In contrast, Kocherlakota (2000) and Cordoba...