Greenwald and Stiglitz (1993) show that firms' capital structure (equity vs. debt) may strongly affect aggregate output and employ-ment as a consequence of undiversifiable bankruptcy costs. This paper extends the framework by analysing the macroeconomic effects of share price fluctuations which...

Australian Steve Keen was, in fact, one of just 13 registered economists , out of a global total of around 36,000 (yes that really comes out as 0.04%), who actually anticipated the global financial crisis.Knowing this, I think it’s almost impossible not to want to read his latest book,...

This study examines the feasibility of constructing reliable commercial property price indices using property tax records. We employ the Clapp and Giacotto (1992) assessed-value method to estimate price indices from 1988:4 to 2008:4 for commercial properties in Florida. The estimated Florida...

Evidence for the OECD countries show that the “great ratios”, such as the unemployment rate, factor shares, Tobin’s q and the investment-capital ratio, fluctuate significantly on medium-term frequencies of 10-40 years duration. To explain these medium-term fluctuations, we establish a...

Current methods for constructing house price indices are based on comparisons of sale prices of residential properties sold two or more times and on regression of the sale prices on the attributes of the properties and of their locations. The two methods have well recognised deficiencies,...

Weather derivatives (WD) are different from most financial derivatives because the underlying weather cannot be traded and therefore cannot be replicated by other financial instruments. The market price of risk (MPR) is an important parameter of the associated equivalent martingale measures used...