Most macroeconomic models fail to replicate the level, volatility, and countercyclicality of risk premia which has been documented in empirical research. In this paper, I introduce a tractable business cycle model with a small, exogenously time-varying risk of economic disaster. Both asset...

In order to develop a model that its both business cycles and asset pricing facts, this paper introduces a small, time-varying risk of economic disaster in an otherwise standard real business cycle model. This simple feature can generate large and volatile risk premia. The paper establishes two...

To study the long-run effect of dividend taxation on aggregate capital accumulation, we build a dynamic general equilibrium model in which there is a continuum of firms subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks. We find that a dividend tax cut raises aggregate productivity by reducing the...

Using plant-level data from Chile and the U.S. we show that investment spikes are highly pro-cyclical, so much so that changes in the number of establishments undergoing investment spikes (the "extensive margin") account for the bulk of variation in aggregate investment. The number of...

Real risk-free interest rates have trended down over the past 30 years. Puzzlingly in light of this decline, (1) the return on private capital has remained stable or even increased, creating an increasing wedge with safe interest rates; (2) stock market valuation ratios have increased only...

Historically, inflation is negatively correlated with stock returns, leading investors to fear inflation. We document using a variety of measures that this association became positive in the U.S. during the 2008-2015 period. We then show how an off-the-shelf New Keynesian model can reproduce...