This paper develops a framework for analyzing the impact of macroeconomic conditions on credit risk and dynamic capital structure choice. We begin by observing that when cash flows depend on current economic conditions, there will be a benefit for firms to adapt their default and financing...

This paper studies competitive equilibria of a production economy with aggregate productivity shocks. There is a continuum of consumers who face borrowing constraints and individual labor endowment shocks. The dynamic economy is described in terms of sequences of aggregate distributions. The...

We propose a novel generalized recursive smooth ambiguity model which permits a three-way separation among risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, and intertemporal substitution. We apply this utility model to a consumption-based asset pricing model in which consumption and dividends follow hidden...

Entrepreneurs often face undiversifiable idiosyncratic risks from their business investments. We extend the standard real options approach to an incomplete markets environment and analyze their joint decisions of business investments, consumption/savings, and portfolio selection. For a lump-sum...

It is puzzling why China has one of the highest investment rates in the world. In 1994 China introduced a new fiscal system. Using this natural experiment and the dynamic provincial panel data during the following period 1995-2002, we find that fiscal decentralization has a significant, positive...

We build a growth model with status preference to explore the effects of patent protection on innovation and social welfare. The main results are as follows. There exists a non-monotonic relationship between patent protection and innovation, and the growth-rate-maximizing degree of patent...