This study contributes to the investigation of the macro-finance interface by assessing the economic content and risk based interpretation of widely employed risk factors in the specification of empirical asset pricing models, i.e., Fama-French size and value, and Carhart momentum factors, as...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the fragility of the US (and other countries') financial system under several respects. In this paper, the properties of a summary index of financial fragility, obtained by combining information conveyed by the "Agency", "Ted" and "BAA-AAA" spreads,...