Using monthly data for Germany from 1968 through 1998, the relationship betweenfluctuations of prices in financial markets and inflation is analyzed. The results of Granger-causality tests reveal that stock market has no predictive power volatility for inflation uncertainty, et vice versa....

Modelling of conditional volatilities and correlations across asset returns is an integral part of portfolio decision making and risk management. Over the past three decades there has been a trend towards increased asset return correlations across markets, a trend which has been accentuated...

This paper uses Hansen and Jagannathan's (1991) volatility bounds to evaluate models with idiosyncratic consumption risk. I show that idiosyncratic risk does not change the volatility bounds at all when consumers have CRRA preferences and the distribution of the idiosyncratic shock is...

This paper examines the evolution of risk in the U.S. financial sector using firm-level equity market data from 1975 to 2005. Over this period, financial sector volatility has steadily increased, reaching extraordinary levels from 1998 to 2002. Much of this recent turbulence can be attributed to...

This paper examines how risk in trading activity can affect the volatility of asset prices. We look for this relationship in the behavior of interest rate swap spreads and in the volume and interest rates of repurchase contracts. Specifically, we focus on convergence trading, in which...

In the wake of the dot.com collapse, investor sentiment toward initial public offerings (IPOs) has turned negative. To many investors, IPOs have come to symbolize the insider abuses and stock market excesses of the Internet bubble period; to others, investing in IPOs is inherently fraught with...

Any measure of unobserved inflation uncertainty relies on specific assumptions which are most likely not fulfilled completely. This calls into question whether an individual measure delivers a reliable signal. To reduce idiosyncratic measurement error, we propose using common information...

We consider fundamental questions of arbitrage pricing arising when the uncertainty model is given by a set of possible mutually singular probability measures. With a single probability model, essential equivalence between the absence of arbitrage and the existence of an equivalent martingale...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a non-technical exposition of the main conclusions of the theory of Rational Belief Equilibrium (RBE) for market volatility. It is argued that the theory of Rational Belief Equilibria (RBE) provides a unified paradigm for explaining market volatility by...