We examine asset prices and consumption patterns in a model in which agents face both aggregate and idiosyncratic income shocks, and insurance markets are incomplete. Agents reduce consumption variability by trading in a stock and bond market to offset idiosyncratic shocks, but transactions...

Governments play a central role in the allocation of capital and risk in the economy. Evaluating the cost to taxpayers of government investments requires an assumption about the government's cost of capital. Governments often take their borrowing rate to be their cost of capital, which...

The U.S. government is the world's largest financial institution, providing credit and assuming risk through diverse activities. But the potential cost and risk of these actions and obligations remain poorly understood and only partially measured. Government budgetary and financial accounting...