We show that cross-border financial flows arise when countries differ in their abilities to use assets as collateral. Financial integration is a way of sharing scarce collateral. The ability of one country to leverage and tranche assets provides attractive financial contracts to investors in the...

Rational bubbles in stocks can cause increases in trading volume, even after accounting for their expansionary effect on output and consumption. Trading volume increases are not caused by speculation driven by differences in beliefs. Dividend-bearing assets used to transfer resources...

We present evidence that shocks to household consumption growth are negatively skewed, persistent, countercyclical, and drive asset prices. We construct a parsimonious model where heterogeneous households have recursive preferences. A single state variable drives the conditional cross-sectional...

The literature on leverage until now shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility. This paper suggests a reason why bad news is more often than not associated with higher future volatility....

A recent literature shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility, that is, it assumes an inverse relationship between first and second moments of asset returns. This paper suggests a reason...

We study general equilibrium in a Lucas (1978) economy with one consumption good and two investors with heterogeneous risk aversions and beliefs about aggregate consumption growth rate, and portfolio constraints. We provide a comprehensive comparison of various constraints, and show which of...

A dynamic pure-exchange general equilibrium model with uncertainty is studied. Fundamentals are supposed to depend continuously on states of nature. It is shown that: 1. if financial markets are complete, then asset prices vary continuously with states of nature, and; 2. if financial markets are...

We study overreaction and the cumulative effect of the consecutive local overreaction patterns in financial markets. The 'overreaction diamond' pattern [1] is one of the key components of a financial market bubble. The cumulative effect of the consecutive short term overreactions arising from...

We study an economy populated by three groups of logarithmic agents: Constrained agents subject to a portfolio constraint that limits their risk-taking, unconstrained agents subject to a standard nonnegative wealth constraint, and arbitrageurs with access to uncollateralized credit. Such credit...