We study the link between underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and index excess returns in secondary markets. We use a theoretical model to argue that underpricing of IPOs raises investors’ attention and, thereby, triggers investments in secondary markets. Our theoretical model...

We report results on the ex ante predictability of monthly excess stock returns in Germany using real-time and revised macroeconomic data. Our real-time macroeconomic data cover the period 1994-2005. We report three results. 1) Real-time macroeconomic data did not contribute much to ex ante...

Models recently studied by Farmer (2012, 2013, 2015) predict that, due to labor-market frictions and "animal spirits", stock-market fluctuations should Granger cause fluctuations of the unemployment rate. We performed several Granger-causality tests on more than half a century of data of German...

We use a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (STR) model to study nonlinearities in the expectation-formation process in the U.S. stock market. To this end, we use data from the Livingston survey to investigate how the importance of regressive and extrapolative expectations fluctuates over time...