We empirically document that serial uncertainty shocks are (1) common in the data and (2) have an increasingly stronger impact on the macroeconomy. In other words, a series of bad (positive) uncertainty shocks exacerbates the economic decline significantly. From a theoretical perspective, these...

Uncertainty shocks are also risk premium shocks. With countercyclical risk aversion (RA), a positive shock to uncertainty increases risk and elevates RA as consumption growth falls. The combination of high RA and high uncertainty produces significant risk premia in bad times, which in turn...

We show that a business-cycle component of consumption growth (dubbed business-cycle consumption) with cycles between 2 and 4 years is effective in explaining the differences in risk premia across alternative test assets, including recently-proposed anomaly portfolios. We formalize the mapping...

We estimate agents' expectations about future fundamentals using a dynamic stochastic generalequilibrium model augmented with anticipated shocks. Accounting for agents' expectations atthe business cycle horizon results in aggregate risk factor innovations that have significant explanatory power...