We study asset prices and portfolio choice with overlapping generations, where the young disregard history to learn from own experience. Disregarding history implies less precise estimates of output growth, which in equilibrium leads the young to increase their investment in risky assets after...

We study an economy with a CEO who trades off the incentive to divert funds, which leads to underinvestment, against the incentive to overinvest based on his optimism. In equilibrium, we see overinvestment relative to what the shareholder or a social planner would implement but underinvestment...

With overlapping generations and heterogeneous risk aversion there is no unique relation between aggregate risk aversion and the real rate of interest, and this type of endogenous “noise” cannot arise in an economy where agents live forever. Our framework accommodates many agent types and...

I study the macroeconomic and asset pricing implications of variations in information quality in a real business cycle model. Learning and fluctuating information quality generate changes in the perception of macroeconomic outcomes, but do not modify the distribution of realized shocks. On the...

Recessions lead to substantial, yet not immediate drop in output. The low and often negative growth during recessions is typically followed by a steady recovery with abnormally high growth. We propose a theory where a recession is preceded by the introduction of a new risk source. The expected...