We show that the difference between the natural rate of interest and the current level of monetary policy stance, which we label Convergence Gap (CG), contains information that is valuable for bond predictability. Adding CG in forecasting regressions of bond excess returns significantly raises...

This paper investigates the implications of cross-country heterogeneity within the euro area for the design of optimal monetary policy. We build an optimizing-based multi-country model (MCM) describing the euro area in which dicurren;erences between structural parameters across countries are...

We present a simple agent-based model to study how the proximate triggering factor of a crash or a rally might relate to its fundamental mechanism, and vice versa. Our agents form opinions and invest, based on three sources of information, (i) public information, i.e. news; (ii) information from...

This article examines how fi rms facing volatile input prices and holding some degree of market power in their product market link their risk management with their production or pricing strategies. This issue is relevant in many industries ranging from manufacturing to energy retailing, where...

Hedge funds offer desirable risk-return profiles; but we also find high management fees, lack of transparency and worse, very limited liquidity (they are often closed to new investors and disinvestment fees can be prohibitive). This creates an incentive to replicate the attractive features of...

We develop a dynamic tradeoff model to examine the importance of manager-shareholder conflicts in capital structure choice. Using panel data on leverage choices and the model's predictions for different statistical moments of leverage, we show that while refinancing costs help explain the...

We document an inverse relation between stock-bond correlations and correlations of growth and inflation. We find that rising inflation uncertainty lowers stock prices but can either lower or raise nominal bond prices depending on whether inflation is counter- or procyclical. We show that the...