We propose a Bayesian procedure for exploiting small, possibly long-lag linear predictability in the innovations of a finite order autoregression. We model the innovations as having a log-spectral density that is a continuous mean-zero Gaussian process of order 1/√T. This local embedding makes...

While the Sharpe ratio is still the dominant measure for ranking risky assets, a substantial effort has been made over the past three decades to find a way to account for non-Normally distributed risks. This paper derives a generalized ranking measure which, under a regularity condition,...

The recent financial crisis has shown how interconnected the financial world has become. Shocks in one location or asset class can have a sizable impact on the stability of institutions and markets around the world. But systemic risk analysis is severely hampered by the lack of consistent data...

We explore the interrelationships between various measures of cultural distance. We first discuss measures of genetic distance, used in the recent economics literature to capture the degree of relatedness between countries. We next describe several classes of measures of linguistic, religious,...

Policy makers and market participants alike wish to understand the amount, economic significance, and concentration of derivatives trading activity. This paper suggests that systematic measuring and reporting of margin by market participants, disaggregated by asset class, would provide more...

This paper exploits a data rich environment to provide direct econometric estimates of time-varying macroeconomic uncertainty, defined as the common volatility in the unforecastable component of a large number of economic indicators. Our estimates display significant independent variations from...

A critical issue in climate-change economics is the specification of the so-called "damages function" and its interaction with the unknown uncertainty of catastrophic outcomes. This paper asks how much we might be misled by our economic assessment of climate change when we employ a conventional...