We examine empirically whether asset prices and exchange rates may be admitted into a standard interest rate rule, using data for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan since 1979. Asset prices and exchange rates can be employed as information variables for a standard “Taylor-type” rule or as arguments in an augmented interest rate rule. Our empirical evidence, based on measures of th...

We introduce intermediation frictions into a Lucas (1978) asset pricing model in order to study the effects of low capital in the intermediary sector on asset prices. Our model shows that low intermediary capital can increase risk premia, Sharpe ratios, volatility and comovement among intermediated assets. Reductions in intermediary capital also lead to a flight-to-quality in which intermediari...

This paper is a contribution to the literature on the factors behind financial stability, focusing on monetary policy design. In particular, it assesses empirically for a sample of 79 countries in the period 1970 to 2000 whether the choice of the central bank objectives and the monetary policy strategy affect financial stability. We find that focusing the central bank objectives on price stabil...

Some advocates of far higher capital requirements for banks invoke the Modigliani-Miller theorem as grounds for judging that associated costs would be minimal. The M&M theorem holds that the average cost of capital to the firm is independent of capital structure, because any reduction in capital cost from switching to higher leverage using lowercost debt is exactly offset by an induced increase...

We disaggregate consumption growth into components with different levels of persistence and show that a single business-cycle consumption factor can explain satisfactorily the differences in risk premia across book-to-market and size-sorted portfolios. We argue that accounting for persistence heterogeneity in consumption is important for interpreting cross-sectional risk compensations in financ...

This paper studies the effects of shocks to the degree of market completeness. We present a dynamic stochastic economy where agents can trade in complete markets in normal times, but where financial markets can stochastically become incomplete. When this happens, agents cannot trade in state contingent assets and cannot re-hedge their risks. Our model formalizes a new type of purely financial s...

We develop a simple model of credit market imperfections, in which the agents have access to a variety of investment projects, which differ in productivity, in the investment size, and in the severity of the agency problems behind the borrowing constraints. A movement in borrower net worth can shift the composition of the credit between projects with different productivity levels. The model thu...

In addition to providing utility, and possibly capital gains, housing facilitates credit transactions when home equity serves as collateral. We document big increases in home-equity loans coinciding with the US house-price boom, and suggest a connection. When it is used as collateral, housing bears a liquidity premium. Since liquidity is endogenous, and depends to some extent on beleifs, even w...

This paper analyzes the role of money in asset markets characterized by search frictions. We develop a dynamic framework that brings together a model for illiquid financial assets à la Duffie, Gârleanu, and Pedersen, and a search-theoretic model of monetary exchange à la Lagos and Wright. The presence of decentralized financial markets generates an essential role for money, which helps investor...

We study the dynamic general equilibrium of an economy where risk averse shareholders delegate the management of the firm to risk averse managers. The optimal contract has two main components: an incentive component corresponding to a non-tradable equity position and a variable “salary” component indexed to the aggregate wage bill and to aggregate dividends. Tying a manager’s compensation to th...