We present a theory of excess stock market volatility, in which market movements are due to trades by very large institutional investors in relatively illiquid markets. Such trades generate significant spikes in returns and volume, even in the absence of important news about fundamentals. We...

We propose a new way to construct instruments in a broad class of economic environments: "granular instrumental variables" (GIVs). In the economies we study, a few large firms, in- dustries or countries account for an important share of economic activity. As the idiosyncratic shocks from these...

This paper develops a theory of optimal taxation with behavioral agents. We use a general behavioral framework that encompasses a wide range of behavioral biases such as misperceptions, internalities and mental accounting. We revisit the three pillars of optimal taxation: Ramsey (linear...

The past forty years have seen a rapid rise in top income inequality in the United States. While there is a large number of existing theories of the Pareto tails of the income and wealth distributions at a given point in time, almost none of these address the fast rise in top inequality observed...

This article studies traditional and modern theories of executive compensation, bringing them together under a unifying framework. We analyze assignment models of the level of pay, and static and dynamic moral hazard models of incentives, and compare their predictions to empirical findings. We...

We provide a theory of the determination of exchange rates based on capital flows in imperfect financial markets. Capital flows drive exchange rates by altering the balance sheets of financiers that bear the risks resulting from international imbalances in the demand for financial assets. Such...

We use novel monthly security-level data on U.S. household portfolio holdings, flows, and returns to analyze asset demand across an extensive range of asset classes, including both public and private assets. Our dataset covers a broad range of households across the wealth distribution, notably...

We propose a theory of the complexity of economic decisions. Leveraging a macroeconomic framework of production functions, we conceptualize the mind as a cognitive economy, where a task's complexity is determined by its composition of cognitive operations. Complexity emerges as the inverse of...

We define risk transfer as the percent change in the market risk exposure for a group of investors over a given period. We estimate risk transfer using novel data on U.S. investors' portfolio holdings, flows, and returns at the security level with comprehensive coverage across asset classes and...

Based on a simple framework, this note clarifies the economics behind bank restructuring and evaluates various restructuring options for systemically important banks. The note assumes that the government aims to reduce the probability of a bank’s default and keep the burden on taxpayers at a...