This paper shows how to decompose weakly stationary time series into the sum, across time scales, of uncorrelated components associated with different degrees of persistence. In particular, we provide an Extended Wold Decomposition based on an isometric scaling operator that makes averages of...

The long-run risk model introduced by R.Bansal and A.Yaron (2004) assumes the existence of a small predictable component in consumption growth and an elasticity of intertemporal substitution of the representative agent larger than one for the substitution effect to dominate the income one....

We revisit the relation between equity returns and financial leverage through the lens of a trade-off model with costly capital structure rebalancing. The model provides a “lookalike” Modigliani-Miller equation that predicts that expected equity returns depend on whether a firm's leverage is...

We address potential strengths and weaknesses of alternative protection schemes, which can be adopted as a ‘default option' in a private, third pillar, pension product. In light of the observed behavior of savers adopting the ‘default option' at international level, we perform a comparative...