Journal Article European Unification and the Dollar Problem Get access T. Balogh T. Balogh Balliol College, Oxford, Oxford University Institute of Statistics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 65, Issue 1, February 1951, Pages 110–119, https://doi.org/10.2307/1879502 Published: 01 February 1951

I. The causes of the British crisis, 32. — II. Pent-up demand and inflation 33. — III. Decontrol, military commitments and the crisis, 37. — IV. The elements of a solution, 50. — V. Conclusions, 60.

Biomedical innovation suffers from a “funding gap” between the needs of drug development firms and the availability of funds. The requirement of large investments for drug development projects and the high pipeline risk associated with FDA approval causes this funding gap in part. In this paper, we propose a new financial instrument—the “FDA hedge”—that pays off upon FDA approval failure. We develop a theory to show that the FDA hedge can help eliminate the funding gap. Using novel project-level data, we establish empirically that FDA hedge risk is idiosyncratic, and show how better sharing this risk can spur welfare-enhancing R&D.

I present and estimate a dynamic model of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation and effort provision. I find that variation in CEO attributes explains the majority of variation in compensation (equity and total) but little of the variation in firm value. The primary drivers of cross-sectional compensation are risk aversion and influence on the board. Additionally, I estimate the magnitude of CEO agency issues. Removing CEO influence increases shareholder value in the typical firm by 1.74%, making CEOs risk neutral increases shareholder value by 16.12%, and removing all agency frictions increases shareholder value by 28.99%.

I exploit Moody's 1982 credit rating refinement to examine its effects on firms’ credit market access, financing decisions, and investment policies. While firms’ ex ante yield spread can partially predict the direction of refinement changes, firms with refinement upgrades experience an additional decrease in their ex post borrowing cost compared with firms with downgrades. The former subsequently also issue more debt and rely more on debt financing over equity than the latter. Lastly, upgraded firms have more capital investments, less cash accumulation, and faster asset growth than downgraded firms. These findings show that credit market information asymmetry significantly affects firms’ real outcomes.

This paper uses discrete-time and continuous-time models to derive equilibrium relations among real and nominal interest rates and the expected growth, variance and covariance parameters of optimally chosen paths for aggregate real consumption and aggregate production. Simple, intuitive and fairly general relations are obtained which apply to most of the models of financial economics of the past 20 years. The single-good analysis generalizes and provides a synthesis of many prior works, whereas the multi-good analysis provides more original results. Consistent business cycle movements are examined for interest rates, inflation and consumption and production aggregates.

Optimal policies for selling a risky depreciable asset with proportional taxes and transaction costs are derived for a representative investor who maximizes the market value of his investment. Also calculated are the market value of his investment and the competitive price of the depreciable asset. Depending upon the values of various parameters, the investor realizes either capital gains and no losses, capital losses and no gains, or neither gains nor losses. Additional properties of the solution are derived numerically.

This paper derives a single-beta asset pricing model in a multi-good, continuous-time model with uncertain consumption-goods prices and uncertain investment opportunities. When no riskless asset exists, a zero-beta pricing model is derived. Asset betas are measured relative to changes in the aggregate real consumption rate, rather than relative to the market. In a single-good model, an individual's asset portfolio results in an optimal consumption rate that has the maximum possible correlation with changes in aggregate consumption. If the capital markets are unconstrained Pareto-optimal, then changes in all individuals' optimal consumption rates are shown to be perfectly correlated.

Assuming continuous trading in continuous time with Brownian motion processes, the basic capital asset pricing model of Sharpe, Lintner, and Mossin is developed under arbitrary distributions of investors' beliefs consistent with available information. Results on the processing of information are reported, and properties of investors' portfolios are derived.

The debt-to-GDP ratio negatively predicts cumulative nominal consumption growth up to a 10-year horizon, resulting from the ratio’s ability to forecast lower inflation and real growth. Moreover, the debt-to-GDP ratio is positively associated with yield spreads. I rationalize these facts in a model in which positive shocks to government debt cause lower inflation and growth, making bonds attractive assets. Furthermore, because longer-term bonds are less exposed to current debt shock than are shorter-term bonds, they are better hedges, resulting in high yield spreads in high-debt states. The model highlights the importance of fiscal risk in understanding the Treasury bond market.