It is widely believed that Treasuries trade at premium prices because of their safety and money-like properties. In reality, this is only true on a relative basis when compared to other bonds, but is often not true on an absolute basis. Many Treasuries have repeatedly traded at substantial...

Corporate cash flows are highly volatile and strongly procyclical. We examine the asset-pricing implications of the sensitivity of corporate cash flows to economic shocks within a continuous-time model in which dividends are a stochastic fraction of aggregate consumption. We provide closed-form...

We study the valuation of state-issued tax-exempt municipal bonds and find that there are significant convenience premia in their prices. These premia parallel those identified in Treasury markets. We find evidence that these premia are tax related. Specifically, the premia are related to...

We use the term structure of bank CD rates to examine whether maturity-transformation risk is priced into the rates banks offer customers. We find that depositors pay a significant cost for the liquidity provided by bank deposits. This cost is strongly related to the amount of...

"We study the pricing of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) using an extensive new data set for the actively-traded CDX credit index and its tranches. We find that a three-factor portfolio credit model allowing for firm-specific, industry, and economywide default events explains virtually...