Richer and healthier agents tend to hold riskier portfolios and spend proportionally less on health expenditures. Potential explanations include health and wealth e ffects on preferences, expected longevity or disposable total wealth. Using HRS data, we perform a structural estimation of a...

When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rate binds, monetary policy makers may lack traditional tools to stimulate aggregate demand. We investigate whether "unconventional" fiscal policy, in the form of pre-announced consumption tax changes, has the potential to meaningfully shift durables...

How households shift spending across firms in response to income fluctuations is an important source of risk to individual firms. Using transaction-level data, we study how households interact with the universe of retailers following changes in income. We find that increases in income, both...

Using new transaction data, I find considerable deviations from consumption smoothing in response to large, regular, predetermined, and salient payments from the Alaska Permanent Fund. On average, the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 25% for nondurables and services within one quarter of...

This paper uses fractional cointegration analysis to examine whether long-run relations exist between securitized real estate returns and three sets of variables frequently used in the literature as the factors driving securitized real estate returns. That is, we examine whether such...

We develop a dynamic model of corporate investment and financing decisions in which corporate insiders have superior information about the firm's growth prospects. We show that firms with positive private information can credibly signal their type to outside investors using the timing of...

This paper deals with efficient estimation in exchangeable nonlinear dynamic panel models with common unobservable factor. The specification accounts for both micro- and macro-dynamics, induced by the lagged individual observation and the common stochastic factor, respectively. For large...

A random variable dominates another random variable with respect to the covariance order if the covariance of any two monotone increasing functions of this variable is smaller. We characterize completely the covariance order, give strong sufficient conditions for it, present a number of examples...

The appendix can be found at: "http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2005194" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2005194 We consider choice over uncertain, monetary payoffs and study a general class of preferences. These preferences favor diversification, except...