When assets exhibit asymmetric dependence or joint downside risk, diversificationcan fail and financial markets may be prone to systemic risk. We analyze thedependence structure of risk factors in the US economy, using both correlations anda parsimonious set of copulas. We find evidence of...

A central role for economic policy involves understanding and reducing the impact of unexpected,extreme events. In this paper, we develop a simple economic framework with latentregime switches. This framework explains why investors and policymakers can decide not tohedge against extreme events,...

The viability of international diversification involves balancing benefits and costs.This balance hinges on the degree of asset dependence. In light of theoretical researchlinking diversification and dependence, we examine international diversification usingtwo measures of dependence:...

International diversification has costs and benefits, depending on the degree of assetdependence. In light of theoretical research linking diversification and dependence, weexamine international diversification with two dependence measures: correlations andextreme dependence. We document several...

We study the problem of potentially spurious attribution of dependence in moderate to large samples, where both the number of variables and length of variable observations are growing. We approach this question of double asymptotics from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. For...

We present a framework for modelling optimum capital adequacy in a dynamic banking context. We combine the (static) capital adequacy framework of Repullo (2013) with a dynamic banking model similar to that of Corbae and D`Erasmo (2014), with the extra feature that the probability of systemic...

Extreme events affect both the real economy and financial markets, and it is valuable to understand their interrelationship. We analyze the likelihood of crises in the macroeconomy and in financial markets. We compare rare disaster data from Barro and Jin (2011), crisis data from Reinhart and...

Where do central bank priors come from and how do policymakers evaluate a model before empirical probabilities are available? To address these questions, we analyze two central banks that choose priors about a rare disaster with the help of expert policy teams. Policymakers are misspecification...

Decision theory has relatively little to say about the formal choice of priors. We pursue the issue of prior choice in a framework that builds on consumer theory. We analyze discovery decisions of a reasoner, in an environment of hypotheses with heterogeneous, subjective plausibility. We...

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