Fluctuations in the aggregate balance sheets of financial intermediaries provide a window on the joint determination of asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates. We document that financial intermediary balance sheets contain strong predictive power for future excess returns on a broad set of...

This paper uses multi-level factor models to characterize within- and between-block variations as well as idiosyncratic noise in large dynamic panels. Block-level shocks are distinguished from genuinely common shocks, and the estimated block-level factors are easy to interpret. The framework...

Since the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) began announcing its policy decisions in 1994, U.S. stock returns have on average been more than thirty times larger on announcement days than on other days. Surprisingly, these abnormal returns are accrued before the policy announcement. The excess...

The macro risk premium measures the threshold return for real activity that receives funding from savers. We base our argument in this paper on the relationship between the macro risk premium and the growth of financial intermediaries' balance sheets. The spare capacity of their balance sheets...

We study regression-based estimators for beta representations of dynamic asset pricing models with affine and exponentially affine pricing kernel specifications. These estimators extend static cross-sectional asset pricing estimators to settings where prices of risk vary with observed state...

We use a statistical model to estimate impulse responses of sectoral price indices to aggregate shocks and to sector-specific shocks. In the median sector, 100 percent of the long-run response of the sectoral price index to a sector-specific shock occurs in the month of the shock. The Calvo...

<b> </b> This paper studies the linkages between housing and consumption in the United States taking into account regional variation. We estimate national and regional housing factors from a comprehensive set of U.S. price and quantity data available at mixed frequencies and over different time...

We study the term structure of disagreement of professional forecasters for key macroeconomic variables. We document a novel set of facts: (i) forecasters disagree at all horizons including the very long run; (ii) the shape of the term structure of disagreement differs markedly across variables:...

We propose regression based estimators for beta representations of dynamic asset pricing models with an affine pricing kernel specification. We allow for state variables that are cross sectional pricing factors, forecasting variables for the price of risk, and factors that are both. The...