The use of equilibrium models in economics springs from the desire for parsimonious models of economic phenomena that take human reasoning into account. This approach has been the cornerstone of modern economic theory. We explain why this is so, extolling the virtues of equilibrium theory; then...

This paper motivates and introduces a two-stage method for estimating diffusion processes based on discretely sampled observations. In the first stage we make use of the feasible central limit theory for realized volatility, as recently developed in Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2002), to...

The establishment recently of risk management vehicles for home prices is described. The potential value of such vehicles, once they become established, is seen in consideration of the inefficiency of the market for single family homes. Institutional changes that might derive from the...

In continuous time specifications, the prices of interest rate derivative securities depend crucially on the mean reversion parameter of the associated interest rate diffusion equation. This parameter is well known to be subject to estimation bias when standard methods like maximum likelihood...

This paper models Continuous Workout Mortgages (CWMs) in an economic environment with refinancings and prepayments by employing a market-observable variable such as the house price index of the pertaining locality. Our main results include: (a) explicit modelling of repayment and interest-only...

During a crisis, developing countries regret having issued dollar denominated debt because they have to pay more when they have less. Ex ante, however, they may be worse off issuing local currency debt because the equilibrium interest rate might rise, making it more expensive for them to borrow....

This is the graduation speech I gave on receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Athens Economics and Business School. I talk about my Greek family, about how I got interested in economics, and then how in the 1990s I came to think about default, collateral, and leverage as the...

We show how the timing of financial innovation might have contributed to the mortgage bubble and then to the crash of 2007-2009. We show why tranching and leverage first raised asset prices and why CDS lowered them afterwards. This may seem puzzling, since it implies that creating a derivative...

We show how the timing of financial innovation might have contributed to the mortgage boom and then to the bust of 2007-2009. We study the effect of leverage, tranching, securitization and CDS on asset prices in a general equilibrium model with collateral. We show why tranching and leverage tend...

A recursive test procedure is suggested that provides a mechanism for testing explosive behavior, date-stamping the origination and collapse of economic exuberance, and providing valid confidence intervals for explosive growth rates. The method involves the recursive implementation of a...