In this paper I examine whether one can use analyst forecasts of macroeconomic variables to improve investors ex-ante allocation of wealth between stocks and bonds. Such forecasts provide a forward-looking approach which I find improves investor's information set for the myopic stock-bond...

Since the early 1990s an unprecedented process of consolidation has taken place in the banking sector in most industrialised countries raising concern of policymakers that it may reduce access to credit for the small business sector. While most of the existing empirical studies have focused on...

The UK has experienced a dramatic increase in earnings and income inequality over the past four decades. We use detailed micro level information to construct quarterly historical measures of inequality from 1969 to 2012. We investigate whether monetary policy shocks played a role in explaining...

During the Great Recession of 2007, unemployment reached nearly 10 percent and the ratio of unemployment to open positions (as measured by the Help Wanted OnLine Index) more than tripled. The weak labor market prompted an unprecedented extension in the length of time in which a claimant can...

The UK has experienced a dramatic increase in earnings and income inequality over the past four decades. We use detailed micro level information to construct historical measures of inequality from 1968 to 2008. We study whether monetary policy shocks played a significant role in explaining this...

This paper takes a new look at the long-run dynamics of inflation and unemployment in response to permanent changes in the growth rate of the money supply. We examine the Phillips curve from the perspective of what we call "frictional growth," i.e. the interaction between money growth and...

We model the rate of inflation and unemployment in Austria since the early 1960s within the Phillips/Fisher framework. The change in labour force is the driving force representing economic activity in the Phillips curve. For Austria, this macroeconomic variable was first tested as a predictor of...

We assess the conditions under which exchange rate fluctuations are contractionary for firm-level investment. To address this question, we match firm-level balance sheet data with a large dataset of firm-level bonds for about 1,000 firms from 36 emerging market economies over the period...

This paper studies the asset pricing implications of idiosyncratic labor income tail risk on credit spread. I propose a model featuring an incomplete market, heterogeneous households with recursive preference, and comovement of tail risk in labor income and firm cash flow growth. The model...

We assess the conditions under which exchange rate fluctuations are contractionary for firm-level investment. To address this question, we match firm-level balance sheet data with a large dataset of firm-level bonds for about 1,000 firms from 36 emerging market economies over the period...