At a time when debt-to-GDP ratios are closely monitored in the Euro area, thispaper generates a set of stylized facts about sovereign debt and yields. First, Ipresent a new dataset on outstanding debt securities and yields for six EA countries(Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain)...

A popular interpretation of the Rational Expectations/Efficient Markets hypothesis states that, if it holds, market valuations must follow a random walk; hence, the hypothesis is frequently criticized on the basis of empirical evidence against such a prediction. Yet this reasoning incurs what we...

A popular interpretation of the Rational Expectations/Efficient Markets hypothesis states that, if the hypothesis holds, then market valuations must follow a random walk. This postulate has frequently been criticized on the basis of empirical evidence. Yet the assertion itself incurs what we...

What role does labor play in firms’ market value? We explore this question using a production-based asset pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor. We posit that hiring of labor is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact, with the interaction...

What role does labor play in a firm's market value? We explore this question using a production-based asset pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor. We posit that hiring of labor is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact, with the interaction...

Standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) models are well known to generate counter-factual asset pricing implications. This paper provides a simple extension to the prior literature where we study an economy that follows a regimes switching process both in the mean and the volatility, in conjunction...

We examine the implications of technological change which results in large-scale capital depreciation for the macrodynamic and financial properties of a dynamic general equilibrium model. In an economy where investors fear a capital-devaluing change in technology, the introduction of the...

We adopt a statistical approach to identify the shocks that explain most of the fluctuations of the slope of the term structure of interest rates. We find that one shock can explain the majority of unpredictable movements in the slope. Impulse response functions lead us to interpret this shock...

This paper studies a quantitative general equilibriummodel of the housing market where a large number of overlapping generations of homeowners face both idiosyncratic and aggregate risks but have limited opportunities to insure against these risks due to incomplete financial markets and...

This paper studies the determinants of the equity premium as implied by producers' first-order conditions. A closed form expression is presented for the Sharpe ratio at steady-state as a function of investment volatility and adjustment cost curvature. Calibrated to the U.S. postwar economy, the...