In order for consumption based asset pricing models to reconcile data on returns with that on consumption, researchers have resorted to augmenting the consumption series in exotic ways. When an agent’s consumption series is subject to changes in volatility, we show that concerns for model...

What determines the frequency domain properties of a stochastic process? How much risk comes from high frequencies, business cycle frequencies or low frequency swings? If these properties are under the influence of an agent, who is compensated by a principal according to the distribution of risk...

Animal spirits are often suggested as a cause of business cycles, but they are very difficult to define. Recent research proposes a novel explanation based on the changing level of risk over time and people’s uncertainty about how the world works. The interaction of these two can lead to...

We first carry out our analysis in the familiar Linear-Quadratic framework of Hansen and Sargent (2008), based on an estimated VAR for the economy and linear regressions of bank performance on the state of the economy. We note, however that the worst case so constructed features undesirable...

In a real business cycle model, an agent's fear of model misspecification interacts with stochastic volatility to induce time varying worst case scenarios. These time varying worst case scenarios capture a notion of animal spirits where the probability distributions used to evaluate decision...

In this paper we simulate a central bank subject to the misperception that prices are indexed to past inflation in periods when firms are unable to re-optimise. It thinks, in other words, that inflation is intrinsically persistent. The central bank sets monetary policy optimally subject to this...