Do financial markets properly reflect leverage? Unlike Gomes and Schmid (2010) who examine this question with a structural approach (using long-term monthly stock characteristics), my paper examines it with a quasi-experimental approach (using short-term a discrete event). After a firm has...

This paper uses data from 1988 federal income tax returns, which asked taxpayers to report their tax-exempt interest income as an information item, to analyze the distribution of tax-exempt asset holdings. More than three quarters of the tax-exempt debt held by households was held by those with...

Our paper reexamines the forecasting regressions which predict annual aggregate stock market returns net of the risk-free rate with lagged aggregate dividend-yield ratios and dividend-price ratios. Prior to 1990, the conditional dividend yield could reliably outperform the historical equity...

This paper uses data from 1988 federal income tax returns, which asked taxpayers to report their tax-exempt interest income as an information item, to analyze the distribution of tax-exempt asset holdings. More than three quarters of the tax-exempt debt held by households was held by those with...

As to the equity premium, the 2008 decline in the stock market has made economists mildly more bullish about future stock market rates of return. Typical expected equity premia are between 5% and 6% per year.As to policy, the recommended fiscal stimulus is around $700 billion. A large majority...