Recent research documents that aggregate stock prices are driven by shocks with persistence levels ranging from daily intervals to several decades. Building on these insights, we introduce a parsimonious equilibrium model in which regime-shifts of heterogeneous durations affect the volatility of...

The adoption and diffusion of technological knowledge is generally regarded as a key element in a country's economic success. However, as is the case with most types of information, the transfer of technological knowledge is likely to be subject to adverse selection problems. In this paper we...

This paper examines the impact of capital gains taxes on equity pricing. Examining three-day cumulative abnormal returns for quarterly earning announcements from 1983-1997, we present evidence consistent with shareholders' capital gains taxes affecting stock price responses. To our knowledge,...

This paper defines an intertemporal tax discontinuity (ITD) as a circumstance in which different tax rates are applied to gains and losses realized at one point in time versus some other point in time, and studies the effects of ITDs on market behaviors at the time of disclosures of firm...

We empirically document that stock prices moved inversely with dividend yields during the May, 1997 week, when the White House and Congress agreed on a budget accord that included a reduction in the capital gains tax rate. The share prices of firms not currently paying dividends increased...

This paper examines the proposition that fluctuations in discounts on closed end funds are driven by changes in individual investor sentiment toward closed end funds and other securities. The theory implies that discounts on various funds must move together, that new funds get started when...

The basic competitive model with freely available technology is suited for static industries but misleading as applied to major innovative economies for which development of new technologies equals in magnitude around 10% of gross domestic investment. We distinguish free generic technology from...

This paper analyzes the role of specialized high-skilled labor in the growth of the service sector as a share of the total economy. Empirically, we emphasize that the growth has been driven by the consumption of services. Rather than being driven by low-skill jobs, the importance of...

We construct a matrix showing the share of the year 2000 population in every country that is descended from people in different source countries in the year 1500. Using this matrix, we analyze how post-1500 migration has influenced the level of GDP per capita and within-country income inequality...

We propose a new model of exchange rates, which yields a theory of the forward premium puzzle. Our explanation combines two ingredients: the possibility of rare economic disasters, and an asset view of the exchange rate. Our model is frictionless, has complete markets, and works for an arbitrary...