We show that the stock market price reaction to monetary policy surprises upon announcements of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is explained mostly by changes in the default-free term structure of yields, not by changes in the equity premium. We reach this conclusion based on a new...

Affine term structure models of bond yields are important tools for analyzing fixed income markets and monetary policy. Estimators of Adrian, Crump, and Mönch (2013) and Diez de Los Rios (2015) replace time-consuming nonlinear search procedures with a set of simple linear regressions. However,...

We model and estimate the term structure of implied costs of equity capital (and implied risk premia) at the firm level for the years 1996-2015 from forward looking option contracts. Empirical tests reject the assumption that the term structure of implied firm-level costs of equity is constant...

We examine how equity-market frictions that restrict pessimistic trading, such as short-sale constraints, affect assessments of default risk. We find that these frictions decrease the usefulness of equity-market variables for identifying defaulting firms but increase their usefulness for...

This paper provides a more direct test of the superior information hypothesis of banks and informs a long standing policy debate about whether banks serve a special information role in the economy. I circumvent the self-selection bias that contaminated prior studies by obtaining bank loan...

We estimate time-varying expected excess returns on the US stock market from 1983 to 2008 using a model that jointly captures the arbitrage-free dynamics of stock returns and nominal bond yields. The model nests the class of affine term structure (of interest rates) models. Stock returns and...

This paper investigates the link between the perceived inflation risks in macro-economic forecasts and the inflation risk premia embodied in financial instruments. We first provide some stylized facts about the term structure of inflation compensation, inflation expectations and inflation risk...

Despite the single currency, yields on government bonds in the Euro Area deviate from German bond yields. These bond spreads are usually attributed to differing default and liquidity risks. Recent research points out that time-varying global factors, approximated by risk measures or short term...

We derive a model in which a standard international capital asset pricing (ICAPM) model is nested within an ICAPM model with market imperfections. In the latter model an idiosyncratic stochastic factor affects the return of risky assets (over a risk-free rate) on top of the systematic component...