Consumption risk sharing among U.S. federal states increases in booms and decreases in recessions. We find that small firms' access to credit markets plays an important role in explaining this stylized fact: business cycle fluctuations in aggregate risk sharing are more pronounced in states in...

EMU was a major step towards deeper financial integration among member states. However, diversification of equity portfolios remained limited while banking integration surged. We argue that the nature of banking integration is of first-order importance for understanding the patterns and channels...

Proprietors are an important group of stockholders and non-diversifiable entrepreneurial risk could therefore help explain time-varying risk premia on the aggregate stock market. This paper suggests an entrepreneurial distress factor that is highly correlated with the aggregate...