The literature documents that low stock returns are associated with increased volatility, but two competing explanations have proved difficult to disentangle. A negative return increases leverage making equity value more volatile. However, volatility feedback increases the risk premium when a...

Earnings press releases are the primary mechanism by which managers announce quarterly earnings and make other concurrent disclosures to investors and other stakeholders. A largely unexplored element of earnings press releases is the language that managers use throughout the press release, which...

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between permanent and transitory components of post-war U.S. business cycles. We specify a time-series model for real GNP and consumption in which the two share a common stochastic trend and transitory component, and Markov-regime switching is...

This paper investigates the relationship between permanent and transitory components of U.S. recessions in an empirical model allowing for business cycle asymmetry. Using a common stochastic trend representation for real GDP and consumption, we divide real GDP into permanent and transitory...

This paper presents a new nonlinear time series model that captures a post-recession 'bounce-back' in the level of aggregate output. While a number of studies have examined this type of business cycle asymmetry using recession-based dummy variables and threshold models, we relate the...

Following Hamilton [1989. A new approach to the economic analysis of nonstationary time series and the business cycle. Econometrica 57, 357-384], estimation of Markov regime-switching regressions typically relies on the assumption that the latent state variable controlling regime change is...

Using a Bayesian model comparison strategy, we search for a volatility reduction in U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) growth within the postwar sample. We find that aggregate real GDP growth has been less volatile since the early 1980s, and that this volatility reduction is concentrated in...

We use counterfactual experiments to investigate the sources of the large volatility reduction in US real GDP growth in the 1980s. Contrary to an existing literature that conducts counterfactual experiments based on classical estimation and point estimates, we consider Bayesian analysis that...