Recently, convincing evidence has been presented that the recession in the wake of the recent financial crisis resulted primarily from an overly levered housing sector that was forced to deleverage and cut consumption spending when faced with collapsing housing prices. Following this...

This paper investigates to what extent the fundamentals of the real economy are reflected in the stock prices of Japan. A Markov switching VAR model with switching variances is used to test the structural identification scheme. Identification of fundamental and nonfundamental shocks is shown to...

This paper examines the usefulness of asset prices in predicting recessions in the G-7 countries. It finds that asset price drops are significantly associated with the beginning of a recession in these countries. In particular, the marginal effect of an equity/house price drop on the likelihood...

We show that a model with imperfectly forecastable changes in future productivity and an occasionally binding collateral constraint can match a set of stylized facts about “sudden stop” events. “Good” news about future productivity raises leverage during times of expansion, increasing...