We study the relation between daily stock market trading activity and the Dow Jones Industrial Average's (DJIA) movement around millenary milestones--numbers that end in three zeros. We find aggregate turnover to be 5% lower when the DJIA level is less than 1% away from the nearest milestone....

This paper provides an equilibrium model subject to heterogeneous beliefs about the likelihood of rare events. I explore asset pricing implications in an incomplete capital market and the effects of market completion. Without explicit rare event insurance, investors insure themselves indirectly...

In a setting where the lender and the borrower have heterogeneous beliefs about the likelihood of a disastrous shock to the borrower's economy, we study the debt contract that defaults at the occurrence of that shock, as proposed by Barro (2006). We find that a higher belief by the lender...

This paper documents the market reaction to the introduction of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in 2010 and 2011. The effect on borrowing rates is ambiguous - Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Slovenia exhibit a decrease in rates on event days, the remaining Eurozone...