If an investor wants to form a portfolio of risky assets and can exert effort to collect information on the future value of these assets before he invests, which assets should he learn about? The best assets to acquire information about are ones the investor expects to hold. But the assets the...

To explain the low-frequency variation in US equity and debt returns in the 20th century, we solve an equilibrium model in which households face housing collateral constraints. An increase in the ratio of housing to human wealth loosens these borrowing constraintsthus allowing for more risk...

We set up an exponentially affine stochastic discount factor model for bond yields and stock returns in order to estimate the prices of aggregate risk. We use the estimated risk prices to compute the no-arbitrage price of a claim to aggregate consumption. The price-dividend ratio of this claim...

We construct a new data set of consumption and income data for the largest US metropolitan areas, and we show that the covariance of regional consumption and income growth varies over time and in the cross-section. In times and regions where collateral is scarce, regional consumption growth is...

Three of the most fundamental changes in US corporations since the early 1970s have been (1) the increased importance of organizational capital in production, (2) the increase in managerial income inequality and pay-performance sensitivity, and (3) the secular decrease in labor market...

Strong bequest motives can explain low retirement spending, but so equally can strong precautionary motives. Given this identification problem, the recent tradition has been largely to ignore bequest motives. We develop a rich model of spending in retirement that allows for both motives, and...

In a model with housing collateral, a decrease in house prices reduces the collateral value of housing, increases household exposure to idiosyncratic risk, and increases the conditional market price of risk. This collateral mechanism can quantitatively replicate the conditional and the...

Evidence of stock return predictability by financial ratios is still controversial, as documented by inconsistent results for in-sample and out-of-sample regressions and by substantial parameter instability. This paper shows that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if the...

We use a standard single-agent model to conduct a simple consumption growth accounting exercise. Consumption growth is driven by news about current and expected future returns on the market portfolio. The market portfolio includes financial and human wealth. We impute the residual of consumption...

In this chapter, we review and discuss the large body of research that has developed over the past 10-plus years that explores the interconnection of macroeconomics, finance, and housing. We focus on three major topics -- housing and the business cycle, housing and portfolio choice, and housing...