We study the role of information in asset-pricing models with long-run cash flow risk. When investors can distinguish short- from long-run consumption risks (full information), the model generates a sizable equity risk premium only if the equity term structure slopes up, contrary to the data. In general, the short- and long-run components are unidentified. We propose a sparsity-based bounded rationality model of long-run risk that is both parsimonious and fully identified from historical data. In contrast to full information, the model generates a sizable market risk premium simultaneously with a downward-sloping equity term structure, as in the data.
American Economic Review2012102(3), 152-155open access
We characterize the equilibrium of a two-country, two-good economy in which agents have opposite preference bias toward one of the two consumption goods and fear model misspecification. We document that disagreement about endowments' growth prospects is a persistent endogenous outcome of this class of economies.
There is an extensive economics and finance literature that addresses the potential benefits of financial integration. If on the one hand there is consensus on the significant inherent gain that may be attained in terms of portfolio diversification, decreased cost of equity capital, and reduced financing constraints, on the other hand, economics modeling has typically stumbled in the prediction of negligible welfare gains. Although the models adopted so far in the literature are able to accurately characterize the joint behavior of a large set of economic variables, they are typically silent about how closely they can track stock markets dynamics. Equivalently, it is still not clear what are the welfare benefits of financial integration when one wants to explain simultaneously prices and quantities. In order to address this point, we propose a general equilibrium model that is able to simultaneously explain: (i) the volatility of exchange rate and stochastic discount factors; and both (ii) the volatility of net exports and (iii) the amount of cross-country correlation and persistence of consumption growth rates. In our economy agents have risk-sensitive preferences in the sense of Hansen and Sargent (1995). This implies that investors have a preference for the timing of the resolution of uncertainty. We conduct our analysis for the case in which consumption is a Cobb-Douglas aggregation of domestic and foreign goods, both of which are tradable. Furthermore we let the dynamics of the growth rate of the endowments of ∗ Both authors are affiliated with the University
Journal of Financial Economics2024157, 103850open access
We quantify the exposure of major financial markets to news shocks about global contagion risk while accounting for local epidemic conditions. For a wide cross section of countries, we construct a novel dataset comprising (i) announcements related to COVID19 and (ii) high-frequency data on epidemic news diffused through Twitter (Hassan et al., 2019’s methodology). We provide novel empirical evidence about financial dynamics both around epidemic announcements and at daily/intra-daily frequencies. Analysis of contagion data and social media activity about COVID19 suggest that the market price of contagion risk is significant.
Focusing on data from the United States and the United Kingdom, we document that both the anomaly identified by Backus and Smith, which concerns the low correlation between consumption differentials and exchange rates, and the forward premium anomaly, which concerns the tendency of high interest rate currencies to appreciate, have become more severe over time. Taking into account different capital mobility regimes, we show that these anomalies turn into general equilibrium regularities in a two‐country and two‐good economy with Epstein and Zin preferences, frictionless markets, and correlated long‐run growth prospects.
Journal of Political Economy2011119(1), 153-181open access
We propose an equilibrium model that can explain a wide range of international finance puzzles, including the high correlation of international stock markets, despite the lack of correlation of fundamentals. We conduct an empirical analysis of our model, which combines cross-country-correlated long-run risk with Epstein and Zin preferences, using U.S. and U.K. data, and show that it successfully reconciles international prices and quantities, thereby solving the international equity premium puzzle. These results provide evidence suggesting a link between common long-run growth perspectives and exchange rate movements.
Journal of Financial Economics2024159, 103874open access
The slope carry takes a long (short) position in the long-term bonds of countries with steeper (flatter) yield curves. The traditional carry takes a long (short) position in countries with high (low) short-term rates. We document that: (i) the slope carry return is slightly negative (strongly positive) in the pre (post) 2008 period, whereas it is concealed over longer samples; (ii) the traditional carry return is lower post-2008; and (iii) expected global growth and inflation declined post-2008. We connect these findings through an equilibrium model in which countries feature heterogeneous exposure to news shocks about global output and global inflation .
In this paper, we consider conditional measures of lead-lag relations between aggregate growth and industry-level cash flow growth in the United States. Our results show that firms in leading industries pay an average annualized return 3.6 higher than that of firms in lagging industries. Using both time-series and cross-sectional tests, we estimate an annual pure timing premium ranging from 1.2 to 1.7. This finding can be rationalized in a model in which (a) agents price growth news shocks, and (b) leading industries provide valuable resolution of uncertainty about the growth prospects of lagging industries.
We study the role of information in asset-pricing models with long-run cash flow risk. When investors can distinguish short- from long-run consumption risks (full information), the model generates a sizable equity risk premium only if the equity term structure slopes up, contrary to the data. In general, the short- and long-run components are unidentified. We propose a sparsity-based bounded rationality model of long-run risk that is both parsimonious and fully identified from historical data. In contrast to full information, the model generates a sizable market risk premium simultaneously with a downward-sloping equity term structure, as in the data.
Focusing on the 10 most traded currencies, we provide empirical evidence regarding a significant heterogeneous exposure to global growth news shocks. We incorporate this empirical fact in a frictionless risk‐sharing model with recursive preferences, multiple countries, and multiple consumption goods whose supply features both global and local short‐ and long‐run shocks. Since news shocks are priced, heterogeneous exposure to long‐lasting global growth shocks results in a relevant reallocation of international resources and currency adjustments. Our unified framework replicates the properties of the HML‐FX and HML‐NFA carry‐trade strategies studied by Lustig, Roussanov, and Verdelhan and Della Corte, Riddiough, and Sarno.