A household's response to income and return shocks depends on the costs of portfolio adjustment. In particular, the extent of portfolio rebalancing and consumption smoothing are influenced by the presence of non-convex portfolio adjustment costs. Suppose bonds can be adjusted costlessly while...

The boom-years preceding the “great recession” were a time of rapid innovation in the financial industry. We explore the idea that both the boom and eventual bust emerged from overoptimistic expectations of efficiency-gains in the financial sector. We treat the bankruptcy costs facing...