Using daily data for the January 1997 to June 2002 period, we analyze the impact of a broad set of macroeconomic news on stock prices in the United States and Germany. With GARCH specifications we test five hypotheses and find that news on real economic activity has a significant impact on stock...

Using a panel of 16 emerging markets, the paper finds a small but statistically significant effect of stock market developments on private consumption spending. In the short run, a 10 percent decline in the annual real stock market return is associated with a reduction in real private...

The estimation of probabilities of recessions/weak economic activity based on probit analyses indicates that the development of the German yield spread as well as the development of a weighted average of European yield spreads have been useful predictors for periods of sluggish economic...