Bond skewness and coskewness (i.e., bond return comovement with market volatility) are both time varying, with cross-sectional variation driven by maturity and credit rating. Other things being equal, longer maturity bonds have lower skewness, and lower coskewness with respect to the bond market...

We introduce a novel approach to estimating latent oil risk factors and establish their significance in pricing non-oil securities. Our model, which features four factors with simple economic interpretations, is estimated using both derivative prices and oil-related equity returns. The fit is...

We test whether financial fluctuations affect firms' decisions, through their impact on banks' cost of funding. We exploit two shocks to Italian bank CDS spreads and equity valuations: the 2007-2009 financial crisis and the 2010-2012 sovereign debt crisis. Using newly available data linking over...

We investigate the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role played by credit constraints in the transmission mechanism, using a novel survey of expectations and plans of Italian firms, taken just before and after the outbreak. Most firms revise downward their expectations for...

We study the effects on financial markets and real economic activity of changes in risk related to political events and policy announcements in Italy during the 2013-2019 period that saw the rise to power of populist parties. We focus on events that have implications for budgetary policy, debt...

This paper uses minimum-variance (MV) admissible kernels to estimate risk premia associated with economic risk variables and to test multi-beta models. Estimating risk premia using MV kernels is appealing because it avoids the need to 1) identify all relevant sources of risk and 2) assume a...