Asset price inflation presents central banks with a puzzle. I examine the case of Germany, 1925-7, when the Reichsbank intervened to bring down stock prices, rectify imbalances and curb speculation. Present value relations, comparisons with historical valuation measures and the time-series...

This paper uses a new data source on share prices to examine how stock markets in 23 countries reacted to the crash of October 1987. It records substantial variations across countries. In general there is no evidence that these differences are related to the structure of markets. However,...

The view that the stock market is myopic is commonly expressed in the financial press. However, the existing econometric evidence does not support this view. In this paper, we report econometric evidence suggesting that the market attaches too high a weight to current dividends relative to...

It is widely thought that neither the foreign exchange markets nor equity markets are efficient, in the sense that tests of the unbiasedness hypothesis and of the present value relationship, respectively, typically lead to rejection. Interest has therefore turned to whether a risk premium...

This note shows that a big stock market crash, in the absence of central bank intervention, will be followed by a major recession one to four quarters later. I establish this fact by studying the forecasting ability of three models of the unemployment rate. I show that the connection between...

We derive new estimates of total wealth, the returns on total wealth, and the wealth effect on consumption. We estimate the prices of aggregate risk from bond yields and stock returns using a no-arbitrage model. Using these risk prices, we compute total wealth as the price of a claim to...

In this paper we concentrate on the potential consequences for the European stock market of a correction of the US stock market. We conduct our analysis by explicitly considering the distinction between interdependence and contagion. By considering a Vector Error Correction Model, in which stock...