The dissertation is focused on studying the behavior of aggregate asset market and its relationship to real economic activity. Chapter 1 offers a new empirical perspective on the relationship between the conditional mean and volatility of stock returns. Chapter 2 builds a general equilibrium...

Liquidity, efficiency and bailouts . In illiquid markets asset prices can be below their expected values. What is "liquidity" and where does it come from? What determines the "liquidity discount" to expected asset values? We present a general equilibrium model in which some agents...

Traffic from major hurricane evacuations is known to cause severe gridlocks on evacuation routes. Better prediction of the expected amount of evacuation traffic is needed to improve the decision-making process for the required evacuation routes and possible deployment of special traffic...