We embed a structural model of credit risk inside a dynamic continuous-time consumption-based asset pricing model, which allows us to price equity and corporate debt in a unified framework. Our key economic assumptions are that the first and second moments of earnings and consumption growth...

This paper studies how inflation as a macroeconomic indicator affects nominal bond prices. I consider an economy with a representative agent with Epstein-Zin preferences. Regime switching affects the state-space capturing inêation and consumption growth. Thus, the agent is concerned about the...

By using a nonlinear VAR model, we investigate whether the response of the US stock and housing markets to uncertainty shocks depends on financial conditions. Our model allows us to change the response of the US financial markets to volatility shocks in periods of normal and financial distress....

Standard factor pricing models do not capture well the common time-series or cross-sectional variation in average returns of financial stocks. We propose a five-factor asset pricing model that complements the standard Fama and French (1993) three-factor model with a financial sector ROE factor...

The goal of this paper is to show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly, meaning there is unequal exposure to macroeconomic risk, and that FD can increase macroeconomic vulnerability. To do this, we first establish three facts: (i) regions in the U.S. vary significantly in...

What is the cross-sectional relationship between financial leverage and expected equity returns? How is the empirical relationship associated with firm's financial decisions? This paper investigates the potential explanations for the flatness relation between financial leverage and expected...

This paper documents that the size effect (Banz, 1981) and the contrarian effect (DeBondt and Thaler, 1985) can be explained by a measurement error in beta. This measurement error results from a change in financial leverage during the beta estimation window. Based on simulations of asset...

This paper examines the relation between industry competition, credit spreads, and levered equity returns. I build a quantitative model where firms make investment, financing, and default decisions subject to aggregate and idiosyncratic risk. Firms operate in heterogeneous industries that differ...

This paper examines the cross-sectional relation between leverage and future stock returns. Prior research documents a puzzling negative correlation. We show that it is largely caused by firms' use of internal financing when having significant off-balance-sheet operating assets due to...

De- and re-levering betas is important to obtain discount rates for assets that are not publicly traded. A de- and re-levering procedure is around for the case of risk-free debt. The procedure for risky debt is much less clear even under very simplifying assumptions. In this paper, I concretize...