Time-varying Risk of Nominal Bonds: How Important Are Macroeconomic Shocks?

I analyze the risk of nominal assets within an external habit model supplemented with novel macroeconomic dynamics. Despite featuring flexible non-Gaussian fundamental processes, the model can be solved in closed-form. The estimation identifies time-varying ”demand-like” and ”supply-like” macroeconomic shocks directly linked to the risk of nominal assets. In addition to matching standard properties of US stock and bond returns, I examine how the model reproduces the time-variation in the stock and bond return correlation. I find that macroeconomic shocks generate sizeable positive and negative correlations, although negative correlations occur less frequently and are smaller than in data. Historically, macroeconomic shocks are most important in explaining high correlations from the late 70’s until the early 90’s and low correlations preand during the Great Recession.