The aim of this paper is to study the pricing factor structure of Italian equity returns. Using twenty-five years of data, we focus on the role of other risk factors besides the market beta, namely size, book to market, and momentum. A two step empirical analysis is provided where first we...

We construct a New Keynesian DSGE model that features financial frictions, investment frictions, long-run productivity risk, and Epstein and Zin (1989) preferences. The model successfully reproduces key features of both asset prices and macroeconomic quantities. Under this set up, we examine the...

We develop an asset pricing model with external habit formation. The model predicts that the effect of consumption shocks on the equity premium depends on the business cycle. We test this empirical implication using a VAR model of the U.S. postwar economy whose parameters are estimated...

This paper examines the role of country-specific sources of output and interest rate or exchange rate volatility in driving FDI activities. Building on a dataset with bilateral FDI flows among 24 OECD economies over the period 1985-2007, we find that nominal and real volatility strongly deter...

For purposes of Value-at-Risk estimation, we consider three multivariate families of heavy-tailed distributions, which can be seen as multidimensional versions of Paretian stable and Student's t distributions allowing different marginals to have different tail thickness. After a discussion of...

We study information processing in a simple endowment economy where the mean consumption growth rate are governed by a hidden state variable and agents have recursive preferences. We show that for typical parameter values, there is a strong incentive to commit to ignoring future information on...