Using features extracted from StockTwits messages between July 2009 and September 2012, we show through simulations that: 1) both message volume and sentiment help explain the diffusion of price information; 2) both message volume and sentiment can be used as features to predict asset price...

The risk return relationship is analysed in bivariate models for return and realised variance (RV) series. Based on daily time series from 21 international market indices for more than 13 years (January 2000 to February 2013), the empirical findings support the arguments of risk return tradeoff,...

We document a rise and fall of the natural interest rate (r*) for several advanced economies, which starts increasing in the 1960's and peaks around the end of the 1980's. We reach this conclusion after showing that the Laubach and Williams (2003) model cannot estimate r* accurately when either...

In this reply to a comment by Jentsch and Lunsford, we show that, when focusing on the relevant impulse responses, the evidence for economic and statistically significant macroeconomic effects of tax changes in Mertens and Ravn (2013) remains present for a range of asymptotically valid inference...

The management of universities demands data on teaching and research performance. While teaching parameters can be measured via student performance and teacher evaluation programs, the connection of research outputs and their grant antecedents is much harder to check, test and understand. This...

We use a dynamic hierarchical factor model to identify the national, regional, and local factors of the city-level housing price growth in China from 2005 to 2015. During the zero-lower-bound (ZLB) episode in the U.S., local factors account for 78% of variations in the month-on-month city-level...

Uncertainty shocks are also risk premium shocks. With countercyclical risk aversion (RA), a positive shock to uncertainty increases risk and elevates RA as consumption growth falls. The combination of high RA and high uncertainty produces significant risk premia in bad times, which in turn...

We investigate the effects of discretionary changes in government spending and taxes using a medium-scale nonlinear vector autoregressive model with policy shocks identified via sign restrictions. Tax cuts and spending increases have larger stimulative effects when there is excess slack in the...

We study the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) shocks on the long-run stock market variances and correlations, primarily for the US and the UK. We find that US EPU shocks affect both US and UK stock market long-run variances and correlation, but UK EPU shocks only affect its own...

Ensuring the security of stable, efficient, and reliable energy supplies has intensified the Interconnections among energy markets. Imbalances between supply and demand due to operational failures, congestions and other sources of risk faced by these connections can lead to a system that is...