This paper studies the importance of stock market literacy and trust for stock ownership decisions. We find that these two distinct channels simultaneously explain not only the probability of participation, but, conditional on participation, also explain the share of investment in stocks. Once...

Using data from eleven major international markets that celebrate six cultural New Year holidays not on January 1st, we show that stock markets tend to outperform in days surrounding the cultural New Year. After controlling for firm characteristics, an average stock earns a 2.5 percent higher...

We explore the term structures of claims to a variety of cash flows: U.S. government bonds (claims to dollars), foreign government bonds (claims to foreign currency), inflation-adjusted bonds (claims to the price index), and equity (claims to future equity indexes or dividends). Average term...

This paper analyses the role of asset prices in comparison to other factors, in particular exchange rates, as a driver of the US trade balance. It employs a Bayesian structural VAR model that requires imposing only a minimum of economically meaningful sign restrictions. We find that equity...

This paper investigates the link between fiscal policy shocks and movements in asset markets using a Fully Simultaneous System approach in a Bayesian framework. Building on the works of Blanchard and Perotti (2002), Leeper and Zha (2003), and Sims and Zha (1999, 2006), the empirical evidence for...