Our new model of consumption-based habit formation preferences generates loglinear, homoskedastic macroeconomic dynamics and time-varying risk premia on bonds and stocks. Consumers' first-order condition for the real risk-free interest rate takes the form of an exactly loglinear consumption Euler equation, commonly assumed in New Keynesian models. Estimating the model separately for 1979-2001 and 2001-2011 explains why the exposure of US Treasury bonds to the stock market changed from positive to negative. A change in the comovement between inflation and the output gap explains changing bond risks, but only when risk premia change endogenously as predicted by the model.

We argue that volatility in a manager's disclosure tone across time should be a function of two components: (i) the firm's innate operating risk and (ii) the extent to which the manager's disclosure transparently reflects that risk. Consistent with this argument, we find that both operating risk and disclosure transparency are important determinants of disclosure tone volatility. We then examine whether investors incorporate the incremental information provided by disclosure tone volatility into their assessments of firm risk. If disclosure tone volatility primarily provides investors with incremental information about a firm's operating risk, we should find a positive association between tone volatility and market‐based assessments of risk. On the other hand, if disclosure tone volatility primarily provides investors with incremental information about a manager's disclosure transparency, we should find a negative association between tone volatility and market‐based assessments of risk. Consistent with an operating risk explanation, we find a positive association between disclosure tone volatility and market‐based assessments of firm risk after controlling for a comprehensive set of proxies for operating risk and transparency. We find little support for an information risk explanation, even when we examine multiple measures specifically designed to capture information risk. Taken together, our results suggest that although disclosure tone volatility is a function of both a firm's operating risk and a manager's disclosure transparency, investors appear to respond as if disclosure tone volatility only provides incremental information about a firm's operating risk.

We build an empirical model to attribute delays in mortgage refinancing to psychological costs inhibiting refinancing until incentives are sufficiently strong; and behavior, potentially attributable to information-gathering costs, lowering the probability of household refinancing per unit time at any incentive. We estimate the model on administrative panel data from Denmark, where mortgage refinancing without cash-out is unconstrained. Middle-aged and wealthy households act as if they have high psychological refinancing costs; but older, poorer, and less-educated households refinance with lower probability irrespective of incentives, thereby achieving lower savings. We use the model to understand frictions in the mortgage channel of monetary policy transmission.