We show that the difference between the natural rate of interest and the current level of monetary policy stance, which we label Convergence Gap (CG), contains information that is valuable for bond predictability. Adding CG in forecasting regressions of bond excess returns significantly raises...

How important are financial and labor market frictions for the business cycle dynamics of a small open economy? What are the quantitative effects of increased financial risk on output and inflation? What drives the variation in the intensive and extensive margin of labor supply? What are the...

The deposit business differs at large versus small banks. We provide a parsimonious model and extensive empirical evidence supporting the idea that much of the variation in deposit-pricing behavior between large and small banks reflects differences in "preferences and technologies." Large banks...

We assess the pattern of Euro Area financial integration adjusting for the role of "onshore offshore financial centers" (OOFCs) within the Euro Area. The OOFCs of Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Netherlands serve dual roles as both hubs of investment fund intermediation and centers of securities...

This study examines the dynamic effects of financial deepening on income distribution of 35 developing countries during the past two decades of 1980-2000. For this purpose, three existing alternative hypotheses concerning the finance-inequality nexus are tested based on the newly assembled...

Empirical evidence shows that observed macroeconomic fundamentals have little explanatory power for nominal exchange rates (the exchange rate determination puzzle). On the other hand, the recent microstructure approach to exchange rates has shown that most exchange rate volatility at short to...

We extend the Lucas asset pricing tree economy to a heterogeneous population. Perturbative methods are applied to explicitly calculate the second order response of returns to heterogeneity. We determine the status of various stylized facts. For example, we find that the equity premium always...

This paper studies time varying bond returns via macroeconomic variables. We find that a single macro index consisting of inflation, real activities and money can predict annual excess bond returns of 1-5 year maturities with R-squares up to 37%. The macro factor has a symmetric tent-shape, when...

This paper investigates the source of predictability of bond risk premia by means of long-term forward interest rates. We show that the predictive ability of forward rates could be due to the high serial correlation and cross-correlation of bond prices. After a simple reparametrization of models...