We study whether clarity of central bank inflation reports affects return volatility in financial markets. We measure clarity of reports by the Czech National Bank, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and Sveriges Riksbank using the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, a standard readability...

This dissertation consists of three essays on the role of social values in financial markets. Chapter 1 uses geographic variation in religious concentration to identify the effect of people's gambling behavior in financial market settings. We argue that religious background predicts people's...

In this essay, I examine and discuss the relationship between the market and the masses in light of recent retail-driven surges in the stock prices of firms like GameStop and AMC. Using two historical snapshots, I draw out similarities and differences between the way the collective power and...

This paper introduces a novel model to analyse the impact of macroeconomic shocks on volatility spillovers within key financial markets, such as Stock, Bond, Gold and Crude Oil. By treating macroeconomic variables as external factors to financial market volatility, our study distinguishes...

Non-bank financial institutions, such as principal-trading firms and hedge funds, increasingly compete with bank-owned dealers in fixed-income markets. Some market participants worry that if non-bank financial institutions push out established bank dealers, liquidity will become unreliable...

This paper studies how the distribution of information supply by the news media affects the macroeconomy. We document three connected facts about the media's reporting of firm news. First, media coverage is highly concentrated, focusing particularly on the largest firms in the economy. Second,...

This paper studies whether and why algorithmic traders exhibit one of the most broadlydocumented behavioral puzzles - the disposition effect. We use trade data from the NASDAQ Copenhagen Stock Exchange merged with the weather data. We find that on average, the disposition effect for human...

We measure soft information contained in the congressional testimonies of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairs and analyze its effect on financial markets. Our measures of Fed Chairs' emotions expressed in words, voice and facial expressions are created using machine learning. Increases in the Chair's...

Recent findings on the term structure of equity and bond yields pose serious challenges to existing models of equilibrium asset pricing. This paper presents a new equilibrium model of subjective expectations to explain the joint historical dynamics of equity and bond yields (and their yield...

We provide empirical evidence of the causal effects of changes in financial intermediaries' net worth on the aggregate economy. Our strategy identifies financial shocks as high-frequency changes in the market value of intermediaries' net worth in a narrow window around their earnings...