Progress on the question of whether policymakers should respond directly to financial variables requires a realistic economic model that captures the links between asset prices, credit expansion, and real economic activity. Standard DSGE models with fully-rational expectations have difficulty...

We investigate the behavior of the equilibrium price-rent ratio for housing in a simple Lucas-type asset pricing model. We allow for time-varying risk aversion (via external habit formation) and time-varying persistence and volatility in the stochastic process for rent growth, consistent with...

Rietz (1988) and Barro (2006) subject consumption and dividends to rare disasters in the growth rate. We extend their framework and subject consumption and dividends to rare disasters in the growth persistence. Wemodel growth persistence by means of two hidden types of economic slowdowns:...

This paper employs a standard asset pricing model to derive theoretical volatility measures in a setting that allows for varying degrees of investor information about the dividend process. We show that the volatility of the price–dividend ratio increases monotonically with investor information...

Rietz (1988) and Barro (2006) subject consumption and dividends to rare disasters in the growth rate. We extend their framework and subject consumption and dividends to rare disasters in the growth persistence. We model growth persistence by means of two hidden types of economic slowdowns:...

We show that the preferences suggested by Greenwood, Hercowitz and Huffman (GHH), which are quite common in real business cycle (RBC) models of small open economies, are not suited for reproducing both the business cycle and the equity premium facts of a small open economy. We show that by...

I study the effect of heterogeneous beliefs about asset prices on the long-term behavior of financial markets. Starting from the ideas of Abreu and Brunnermeier (2003), a two-dimensional system of differential equations is developed. The first dynamic variable is the asset price growth rate. The...

This paper applies a heterogeneous agent asset pricing model, featuring fundamentalists and chartists, to the price-dividend and price-earnings ratios of the S&P500 index. Agents update their beliefs according to macroeconomic information, as an alternative to evolutionary dynamics. For...

This paper studies the role of the equity price channel in business cycle fluctuations, and highlights the equity price channel as a different aspect to general equilibrium models with financial frictions and, as a result, emphasizes the systemic influence of financial markets on the real...

The dangers of shouting ``fire'' in a crowded theater are well understood, but the dangers of rushing to the exit in the financial markets are more complex. Yet, the two events share several features, and I analyze why people crowd into theaters and trades, why they run, what determines the...