Using U.S. data from 1926 to 2015, I show that financial skewness?a measure comparing cross-sectional upside and downside risks of the distribution of stock market returns of financial firms?is a powerful predictor of business cycle fluctuations. I then show that shocks to financial skewness are...

The cross-sectional average of pairwise correlations across stocks traded on the NYSE, AMEX, and Nasdaq is a powerful predictor of U.S. economic activity at a horizon of one to four years. Its predictive ability is on a par with the slope of the yield curve and significantly exceeds that of some...