We propose a method to measure the welfare cost of economic fluctuations that does not require full specification of consumer preferences and instead uses asset prices. The method is based on the marginal cost of consumption fluctuations, the per unit benefit of a marginal reduction in...

We show that the stock market may fail to aggregate information even if it appears to be efficient, and that the resulting decrease in the information content of prices may drastically reduce welfare. We solve a macroeconomic model in which information about fundamentals is dispersed and...

We study the stock market effects of the arrival of the three rounds of "stimulus checks" to U.S. taxpayers and the single round of direct payments to Hong Kong citizens. The first two rounds of U.S. checks appear to have increased retail buying and share prices of retail-dominated portfolios....

We develop a model in which innovations in an economy's growth potential are an important driving force of the business cycle. The framework shares the emphasis of the recent "new shock" literature on revisions of beliefs about the future as a source of fluctuations, but differs by tieing these...

Financial markets look at data on aggregate investment for clues about underlying profitability. At the same time, firms' investment depends on expected equity prices. This generates a two-way feedback between financial market prices and investment. In this paper we study the positive and...

This paper presents a model in which a partially anticipated technological shock results, in the short-run, in lower investment and higher unemployment. Because of the expectation of future lower profits, the market value of existing firms --and the wages they pay-- decrease before the...

A new technology or product is often developed by the single entrepreneur. Whether he reaches the public offering stage or is acquired by a listed firm it takes time for the innovator to add value to the stock market. Indeed first, reduce the market's value because some firms -- usually large or...

This paper reviews and generalizes the sufficient statistics approach to policy evaluation. The idea of the approach is that the welfare effect of policy changes can be expressed in terms estimable reduced-form elasticities, allowing for policy evaluation without estimating the structural...

The year 2005 brought record numbers of hurricanes and storm damages to the United States. Was this a foretaste of increasingly destructive hurricanes in an era of global warming? This study examines the economic impacts of U.S. hurricanes. The major conclusions are the following: First, there...

In a model with multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria we add trade in assets that pay based on the realization of a sunspot. Asset trading restricts the equilibrium set in a way that raises welfare by eliminating equilibria with a high likelihood of disasters. When the probability of a disaster is...