We quantify the impact of merger activity on productive efficiency. We develop and calibrate a dynamic industry-equilibrium model that features mergers, entry, and exit by heterogeneous firms. Mergers affect productivity directly through realized synergies, and indirectly through firms'...

Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century posits the return r on capital to be larger than the economic growth rate g as a main driver of inequalities. This article points out the circumstances under which the reverse inference holds. We show that increasing inequality promotes increasing...

Using a novel and comprehensive dataset, we provide the first systematic study of liquidity in the foreign exchange (FX) market. Contrary to common perceptions, we find significant variation in liquidity across exchange rates, substantial costs due to FX illiquidity, and strong commonality in...

The assessment of models of financial market behavior requires evaluation tools. When complexity hinders a direct estimation approach, e.g., for agent based microsimulation models or complex multifractal models, simulation based estimators might provide an alternative. In order to apply such...

We identify local and global factors across international bond markets that are poorly spanned by the traditional level, slope and curvature factors but have strong forecasting power for future bond excess returns. Local and global factors are jointly significant predictors of bond returns,...

We re-examine the relationship between exchange rate movements and firm value. We estimate the exchange rate exposure of publicly listed U.S. firms clustered into eleven industries. Using a panel approach, we uncover statistically significant and sizable unconditional exposure. We also examine...

I study crash risk in currency markets by means of a proxy for global skewness, which measures the aggregate asymmetry of daily changes in spot exchange rates involved in a carry-trade portfolio. I find that this factor is priced in the cross-section of individual currencies. The premium for...

The failure of uncovered interest rate parity to explain short-term interest rate movements is well documented. We show that short-term changes in long-term interest rates do help to explain short-term exchange rate movements. The relationship gets stronger over our sample period, as the...

In this paper, we consider an alternative perspective to China's exchange rate policy. We study a semi-open economy where the private sector has no access to international capital markets but the central bank has full access. Moreover, we assume limited financial development generating a large...

We examine time varying integration of developed (DM) and emerging (EM) market government bonds. Although we find an upward trend for most countries and maturity bands, we do observe reversals and negative trends among both DMs and EMs and for some maturities during the financial crisis. We...