Recessions are an inherent part of economic cycles. During the last decade we have experienced two extended periods of significant economic slowdown accompanied by major downturns in most of the asset classes and especially in equities. Investors during recessions suffer from severe losses and...

Economic growth is persistently low following a financial crisis, possibly because of a continuing weal banking system. In a financial crisis bank health is significantly damaged. Post-crisis regulatory changes have aimed at restoring bank health, but measuring bank health by Tobin's Q, we find...

Economic growth is persistently low following a financial crisis, possibly because of a continuing weak banking system. In a financial crisis bank health is significantly damaged. Post-crisis regulatory changes have aimed at restoring bank health, but measuring bank health by Tobin's Q, we find...

A financial crisis is an event of sudden information acquisition about the collateral backing short-term debt in credit markets. When investors see a financial crisis coming, however, they react by more intensively acquiring information about firms in stock markets, revealing those that are...

We examine the presence of short-termism in the asset allocation decisions of U.S. private defined benefit pension plans. We document an inverse U-shaped relationship between a plan's allocation to fixed income securities and its funding ratio, centered on a 80% funding ratio, and show that the...

The authors measure the aggregate state of the economy using variables motivated by the macro-finance literature. In particular, they focus on three specific measures: macro-growth, fragility, and volatility. Macro-growth, a procyclical measure, combines information from a series of...

A financial crisis is an event of sudden information acquisition about the collateral backing short-term debt in credit markets. When investors see a financial crisis coming, however, they react by more intensively acquiring information about firms in stock markets, revealing those that are...