Does capital markets uncertainty affect the business cycle? We find that financial volatility predicts 30% of post-war economic activity in the United States, and that during the Great Moderation, aggregate stock market volatility explains, alone, up to 55% of real growth. In out-of-sample...

We provide evidence that changes in the equity price and volatility of individual firms (measures that approximate the definition of 'granular shock' given in Gabaix, 2010) are key to improve the predictability of aggregate business cycle fluctuations in a number of countries. Specifically,...

This paper introduces a no-arbitrage framework to assess how macroeconomic factors help explain the risk-premium agents require to bear the risk of fluctuations in stock market volatility. We develop a model in which return volatility and volatility risk-premia are stochastic and derive...

This paper introduces a no-arbitrage framework to assess how macroeconomic factors help explain the risk-premium agents require to bear the risk of fluctuations in stock market volatility. We develop a model in which stock volatility and volatility risk-premia are stochastic and derive...

Which pricing kernel restrictions are needed to make low dimensional Markov models consistent with given sets of predictions on aggregate stock-market fluctuations? This paper develops theoretical test conditions addressing this and related reverse engineering issues arising within a fairly...