If households face uninsurable idiosyncratic earnings risk, theory predicts that redistributive tax and transfer systems have both an insurance and a distortionary effect. Exploiting the substantial variation of tax and transfer systems across U.S. states and over time, we investigate the...

The paper describes the interaction of sovereign debt, fiscal and banking crisis in the Eurozone and how the Eurozone is responding to these challenges. These events affect Cyprus in the longer term by affecting banking supervision and fiscal policy. In the shorter run, however, lessons from...

We examine the impact of US monetary policy shocks on exchange rates using the monetary policy indicator proposed by Bernanke and Mihov [Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113 (1998) 869–902]. We find evidence for instantaneous, rather than delayed, US dollar overshooting after a monetary shock...

We show that a life-cycle model with realistically calibrated uninsurable labor income risk and moderate risk aversion can simultaneously match stock market participation rates and asset allocation decisions conditional on participation. The key ingredients of the model are Epstein–Zin...

We investigate whether a rare event (like the default of the annuity provider) can explain the annuity market participation puzzle. High risk aversion is needed to change behavior in the presence of such a disastrous shock but higher risk aversion also makes annuities more valuable. Therefore,...

This paper shows that the two main models in the buffer stock saving literature can be nested in a model that varies the level of available social insurance. Equivalently, the assumption about the time series process for labor income (and social insurance during unemployment) is crucial in...

Using U.K. microeconomic data, we analyze the empirical determinants of voluntary annuity market demand. We find that annuity market participation increases with financial wealth, life expectancy and education and decreases with other pension income and a possible bequest motive for surviving...

We provide evidence that fiscal policy in resource-rich countries is strongly procyclical. The empirical analysis reveals that on average real government consumption in these countries tends to significantly rise (fall) in good (bad) times. To control for endogeneity we use an instrumental...

Using event studies we find statistically and economically significant, negative daily abnormal stock market returns prior to sovereign debt rating downgrade announcements. Instrumental variable techniques show that these findings are more pronounced in countries with lower institutional...