We propose a new approach to analyze economic shocks. Our new procedure identifies economic shocks as exogenous shifts in a function; hence, we call them "functional shocks." We show how to identify such shocks and how to trace their effects in the economy via VARs using "VARs with functional...

We show that the pre-FOMC announcement drift is more pronounced among lottery-like stocks and does not reverse in the days following the announcement. The pre-FOMC demand for lottery-like stocks is more prominent among institutional investors than retail investors. The associated pre-FOMC drift...

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been marketed as revolutionary new money and an attractive investment. But closer examination suggests that Bitcoin works poorly as money and does not qualify as an asset based on user value. Instead, almost all Bitcoin trading has purely speculative purposes