Asset Prices,News Shocks,and the Trade Balance

We analyze the relationship between asset prices and the trade balance estimating a Bayesian VAR for a broad set of 38 industrialized and emerging market countries. To derive model‐based identifying restrictions, we model asset price shocks as news shocks about future productivity in a two‐country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Such shocks are found to exert sizable effects on the trade balance. Moreover, the effects are highly heterogeneous across countries. For instance, following a news shock that implies on impact a 10% increase in domestic equity prices relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. trade balance will worsen by up to 1.0 percentage points, but much less so for most other economies. We find that this heterogeneity appears to be linked to the financial market depth and equity home bias of countries. Moreover, the channels via wealth effects and via the real exchange rate are important for understanding the heterogeneity in the transmission.     

Innovation,Growth, and Asset Prices

We examine the asset pricing implications of a production economy whose long‐term growth prospects are endogenously determined by innovation and R&D. In equilibrium, R&D endogenously drives a small, persistent component in productivity that generates long‐run uncertainty about economic growth. With recursive preferences, households fear that persistent downturns in economic growth are accompanied by low asset valuations and command high‐risk premia in asset markets. Empirically, we find substantial evidence for innovation‐driven low‐frequency movements in aggregate growth rates and asset market valuations. In short, equilibrium growth is risky.     

Rational Asset Prices

The mean, covariability, and predictability of the return of different classes of financial assets challenge the rational economic model for an explanation. The unconditional mean aggregate equity premium is almost seven percent per year and remains high after adjusting downwards the sample mean premium by introducing prior beliefs about the stationarity of the price–dividend ratio and the (non)forecastability of the long–term dividend growth and price–dividend ratio. Recognition that idiosyncratic income shocks are uninsurable and concentrated in recessions contributes toward an explanation. Also borrowing constraints over the investors' life cycle that shift the stock market risk to the saving middle–aged consumers contribute toward an explanation.     

Volatility,the Macroeconomy,and Asset Prices

How important are volatility fluctuations for asset prices and the macroeconomy? We find that an increase in macroeconomic volatility is associated with an increase in discount rates and a decline in consumption. We develop a framework in which cash flow, discount rate, and volatility risks determine risk premia and show that volatility plays a significant role in explaining the joint dynamics of returns to human capital and equity. Volatility risk carries a sizable positive risk premium and helps account for the cross section of expected returns. Our evidence demonstrates that volatility is important for understanding expected returns and macroeconomic fluctuations.     

Learning,Monetary Policy,and Asset Prices

We explore the stability properties of interest rate rules granting an explicit response to stock prices in a New Keynesian DSGE model where the presence of non‐Ricardian households makes stock prices nonredundant for the business cycle. We find that responding to stock prices enlarges the policy space for which the equilibrium is both determinate and E‐stable (learnable). In particular, the Taylor principle ceases to be necessary, and determinacy/E‐stability is granted also by mildly passive policy rules. Our results appear to be more prominent in economies featuring a lower elasticity of substitution across differentiated products and/or more rigid labor markets.     

House Prices and Government Spending Shocks

We show that dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with housing and collateralized borrowing predict a fall in house prices following positive government spending shocks. By contrast, we show that house prices in the United States rise persistently after identified positive government spending shocks. We clarify that the incorrect house price response is due to a general property of DSGE models—approximately constant shadow value of housing—and that modifying preferences and production structure cannot help in obtaining the correct house price response. Properly accounting for the empirical evidence on government spending shocks and house prices using a DSGE model therefore remains a significant challenge.     

Money,Asset Prices,and the Liquidity Premium

This paper examines the effect of monetary policy on the market value of the liquidity services that financial assets provide, known as the liquidity premium. The theory predicts that money supply and nominal interest rates have positive effects on the liquidity premium, but asset supply has a negative effect. The empirical analysis with U.S. data confirms the theoretical predictions. The theory also proposes that the liquidity properties of assets can cause negative nominal yields when the money holding cost is low and liquid assets are scarce. The suggestive empirical findings in Switzerland to support this theoretical result are presented.     

Feedback Effects and Asset Prices

Feedback effects from asset prices to firm cash flows have been empirically documented. This finding raises a question for asset pricing: How are asset prices determined if price affects fundamental value, which in turn affects price? In this environment, by buying assets that others are buying, investors ensure high future cash flows for the firm and subsequent high returns for themselves. Hence, investors have an incentive to coordinate, which may generate self‐fulfilling beliefs and multiple equilibria. Using insights from global games, we pin down investors' beliefs, analyze equilibrium prices, and show that strong feedback leads to higher excess volatility.     

Aggregate Earnings and Asset Prices

A principal-components analysis demonstrates that common earnings factors explain a substantial portion of firm-level earnings variation, implying earnings shocks have substantial systematic components and are not almost fully diversifiable as prior literature has concluded. Furthermore, the principal components of earnings and returns are highly correlated, implying aggregate earnings risks and return risks are related. In contrast to previous studies, the correlation we report between the systematic components of earnings and returns is stable over time. We also show that the earnings factors are priced, in the sense that the sensitivities of securities' returns to the earnings factors explain a significant portion of the cross-sectional variation in returns, even controlling for return risk. This suggests earnings performance is an underlying source of priced risk. Our evidence that the information sets of returns and earnings are jointly determined implies cash flow risk and return risk are not fully separable, and raises the possibility that it is the common variation of earnings and returns that is priced.     

Dividends and Capital Asset Prices

Tax based dividend models of capital asset pricing assume that dividends are known at the time prices are set. Dividends which are announced and paid in the same month, and dividends which were expected but cancelled in the month constitute surprises which interfere with many empirical tests of the effects of expected dividend yield on returns. This paper avoids these problems by relating returns to forecasts of dividend yield obtained from past data.     

Asset Prices and Exchange Rates

We study the implications of introducing demand shocks and tradein goods into an otherwise standard international asset pricingmodel. Trade in goods gives rise to an additional channel ofinternational propagation—through the terms of trade—absentin traditional single-good models. The inclusion of demand shockshelps overturn many unrealistic implications of existing internationalfinance models in which productivity shocks are the sole sourceof uncertainty. Our model generates a rich set of implicationson how stock, bond, and foreign exchange markets co-move. Wesolve the model in closed-form, which yields a system of equationsthat can be readily estimated empirically. Our estimation validatesthe main predictions of the theory.     

Local Risk,Local Factors,and Asset Prices

Firm location affects firm risk through local factor prices. We find more procyclical factor prices such as wages and real estate prices in areas with more cyclical economies, namely, high “local beta” areas. While procyclical wages provide a natural hedge against aggregate shocks and reduce firm risk, procyclical prices of real estate, which are part of firm assets, increase firm risk. We confirm that firms located in higher local beta areas have lower industry‐adjusted returns and conditional betas, and show that the effect is stronger among firms with low real estate holdings. A production‐based equilibrium model explains these empirical findings.     

Information,Asset Prices,and the Volume of Trade

A dynamic equilibrium model is constructed in which agents with access to different information sets participate in the capital market. Agents must use the equilibrium price of capital to make optimal forecasts of the return to holding capital. Examples show that the volume of trade, as well as the price of capital, can be highly correlated with a measure of the information content of prices. This measure of information is the difference between the unconditional entropy of the dividend and the entropy of the dividend conditional on observing the price of capital.     

异质金融中介、资产价格与宏观经济波动

通过构建DSGE模型,探讨包含影子银行在内的金融中介机构、资产价格和宏观经济波动之间的内在联系,以及金融中介机构自身净值变化通过资产价格和杠杆率向实体经济传播的机制.结果表明:增加金融中介净值比直接放松信贷约束对宏观经济的冲击作用更大,引入影子银行后的双中介模型对金融部门和宏观经济变量形成放大效应,对影子银行监管的严格程度也会对金融经济变量产生不同影响.因此,决策者需在限制影子银行规模、维持金融稳定和放宽对影子银行监管、促进经济增长之间进行权衡.     

Model Uncertainty, Limited Market Participation, and Asset Prices

We demonstrate that limited participation can arise endogenouslyin the presence of model uncertainty and heterogeneous uncertainty-averseinvestors. When uncertainty dispersion among investors is small,full participation prevails in equilibrium. Equity premium isrelated to the average uncertainty among investors and a conglomeratetrades at a price equal to the sum of its single-segment components.When uncertainty dispersion is large, investors with high uncertaintychoose not to participate in the stock market, resulting inlimited market participation. When limited participation occurs,participation rate and equity premium can decrease in uncertaintydispersion and a conglomerate trades at a discount.     

Financial Flexibility,Bank Capital Flows,and Asset Prices

In our parsimonious general‐equilibrium model of banking and asset pricing, intermediaries have the expertise to monitor and reallocate capital. We study financial development, intraeconomy capital flows, the size of the banking sector, the value of intermediation, expected market returns, and the risk of bank crashes. Asset pricing implications include: a market's dividend yield is related to its financial flexibility, and capital flows should be important in explaining expected returns and the risk of bank crashes. Our predictions are broadly consistent with the aggregate behavior of U.S. capital markets since 1950.     

Generalized Disappointment Aversion and Asset Prices

We characterize generalized disappointment aversion (GDA) risk preferences that can overweight lower‐tail outcomes relative to expected utility. We show in an endowment economy that recursive utility with GDA risk preferences generates effective risk aversion that is countercyclical. This feature comes from endogenous variation in the probability of disappointment in the representative agent's intertemporal consumption‐saving problem that underlies the asset pricing model. The variation in effective risk aversion produces a large equity premium and a risk‐free rate that is procyclical and has low volatility in an economy with a simple autoregressive endowment‐growth process.     

油价不确定性与企业投资

本文利用2000-2015年中国宏观经济数据和1998-2007年中国工业企业调查数据,从宏观和微观两种视角考察了投资对油价不确定性冲击的反应。宏观研究发现,油价不确定性冲击不仅能够解释约12%的固定资产投资波动,而且还对固定资产投资具有短期抑制效应。在微观层面,本文采用基于异质性折旧率计算得到的企业投资,发现油价不确定性冲击在短期内对民营企业和外资企业投资也有抑制效应,但是对国有和集体企业的影响不显著,这一结论随着企业折旧率异质性的程度提高将变得更加明显。进一步分析发现,与非国有企业相比,国有和集体企业的投资行为具有明显的政策导向性,特别是在“十五计划”实施以后,国有和集体企业的投资密度比非国有企业高出约2.1%。这种政策导向性的存在,使得国有和集体企业的投资对油价不确定性冲击的反应并不显著。     

Uncertainty,Time‐Varying Fear,and Asset Prices

I construct an equilibrium model that captures salient properties of index option prices, equity returns, variance, and the risk‐free rate. A representative investor makes consumption and portfolio choice decisions that are robust to his uncertainty about the true economic model. He pays a large premium for index options because they hedge important model misspecification concerns, particularly concerning jump shocks to cash flow growth and volatility. A calibration shows that empirically consistent fundamentals and reasonable model uncertainty explain option prices and the variance premium. Time variation in uncertainty generates variance premium fluctuations, helping explain their power to predict stock returns.     

资产价格波动与银行系统稳定

有关金融危机的理论研究表明,资产价格波动与银行脆弱性之间存在很强的相关性。资产价格波动主要通过信贷风险渠道、市场风险渠道、经纪业务收入渠道、为附属机构注资的风险渠道及“第二回合”渠道等传导渠道影响到银行系统的稳定。发生在斯堪的纳维亚和日本的银行危机证明,资产价格剧烈波动确实会造成严重的银行问题,所以为维持银行系统的稳定,监管当局应该密切关注资产价格可能出现的剧烈下跌对银行部门可能产生的风险并采取应对方法。