We generalize the classic Grossman and Laroque (1990) (GL) model of optimal portfolio choice with housing and transaction costs by introducing predictability in house prices. As in the GL model, agents only move to more expensive (cheaper) houses when their wealth-to-housing ratios reach an...

Households face earnings risk which is non-normal and varies by age and over the income distribution. We show that allowing for these rich features of earnings dynamics, in the context of a structurally estimated life-cycle portfolio choice model, helps to rationalize the limited participation...

We study how financial market efficiency affects a measure of diversification of output across industrial sectors borrowed from the portfolio allocation literature. Using data on sector-level value added for a wide cross section of countries and for various levels of disaggregation, we construct...

We examine the transmission of monetary policy via the euro area investment fund sector using a BVAR framework. We find that expansionary shocks are associated with net inflows and that these are strongest for riskier fund types, reflecting search for yield among euro area investors. Search for...

We address the question of whether the heterogeneity in savings is partly due to differences in pension wealth across individuals and across countries, using a European harmonised wealth survey (HFCS) combined with estimates of pension wealth (OECD). First, we find significant displacement...

One important source of systemic risk can arise from asset commonality among financial institutions. This indirect interconnection may occur when financial institutions invest in similar or correlated assets and is also described as overlapping portfolios. In this work, we propose a...

We study whether a pre-existing link between bank and sovereign credit risk biased euro area banks' sovereign debt portfolio choices during 2011Q4 and 2012Q1 - a period of exceptional increases in their domestic sovereign bond holdings. We find that banks whose creditworthiness is linked to that...

This paper investigates whether global investors are over or under exposed towards the euro area and the role of home bias and institutions at home in shaping this exposure. According to a simple benchmark from standard portfolio theory, euro area investors - in particular those from euro area...

This paper uses a unique comprehensive database on French security assets and liabilities to study the dynamics of domestic and external sectoral portfolios, their network structure, and their role in the propagation of shocks. We first show how the sharp deterioration of the net external...

We investigate asset returns around banking crises in 44 advanced and emerging economies from 1960 to 2018. In contrast to the view that buying assets during banking crises is a profitable long-run strategy, we find returns of equity and other asset classes generally underperform after banking...