In contrast to earlier work, we study the relation between the current account and interest rate differentials. To do so, we document the relation for international data. We then interpret this relation from a two-country, dynamic, general equilibrium environment. We finally confront the...

This letter presents and assesses a procedure to generate recursive measures of aggregate total wealth and portfolio return. Conceptually, the procedure is more flexible than the classical replacement cost and present value methods. Empirically, the procedure yields recursive measures that...

We propose an empirical procedure, which exploits the conditional heteroscedasticity of fundamental disturbances, to test the targeting and orthogonality restrictions imposed in the recent VAR literature to identify monetary policy shocks. Based on U.S. monthly data for the post-1982 period, we...

This paper gauges the international integration hypothesis, i.e. risk-adjusted anticipated returns are identical, even when financial instruments are traded in different countries. Under time-varying conditional volatility, this hypothesis can be tested by verifying the equality between domestic...

Recently, progresses have been made in understanding and in testing precautionary saving behaviour. This paper surveys the factors determining precautionary saving, the impact of government policies on this type of saving, and the numerical importance as well as the empirical relevance of this...

In this paper we gauge consumption and portfolio shares, rather than the traditional pricing implications. We study both aggregated (financial, tangible, and human) and disaggregated (deposits, stocks, insurance, and pensions) assets. The empirical shares are computed from recent aggregate...

This paper evaluates the international integration hypothesis, that is, that risk-adjusted anticipated returns are identical, even when financial instruments are traded in different countries. Under time-varying conditional volatility, this hypothesis is tested by verifying the equality between...

This paper gauges the strength of precautionary saving motives by estimating the coefficient of prudence from the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey data set (a time series of cross-sections). The instrumental variables estimates reveal that greater uncertainty systematically leads to larger current...

The permanent income hypothesis under certainty equivalence yields a martingale consumption process. Empirically, this hypothesis is rejected because consumption is excessively sensitive to anticipated income. One approach to account for excess sensitivity is to relax certainty equivalence by...