Hedge fund managers differ in ability and investors want to distinguish good ones from bad. Via the design of their investment strategies, better fund managers want to ease this inference problem while worse fund managers want to complicate it. We impose only the minimal restrictions on the...

We estimate a large Bayesian time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model of daily stock return volatilities for 35 U.S. and European financial institutions. Based on that model we extract a connectedness index in the spirit of Diebold and Yilmaz (2014) (DYCI). We show that the...

In this paper we use a simultaneous equations model to examine the relationship between analysts' forecasting decisions and institutions' investment decisions. Neglecting their interaction results in model misspecification. We find that analysts' optimism concerning a firm's earnings responds...

We study financial fragility, exchange rate crises, and monetary policy in an open economy version of a Diamond-Dybvig model. The banking system, the exchange rate regime, and central bank credit policy are seen as parts of a mechanism intended to maximize social welfare; if the mechanism fails,...

Every year over 20 states offer sales tax holidays (STHs) on specific items like clothes, shoes and other items to encourage consumption, effecting over 100 million consumers. We use a unique dataset of credit cards transaction to study the spending response to these holidays. Using a...