The paper examines the e¤ect of in‡ation on growth in transition countries. It presents panel data evidence for 13 transition countries over the 1990-2003 period; it uses a …xed e¤ects, full-information maximum likelihood, panel approach to account for possible bias from correlations among the unobserved e¤ects and the observed country heterogeniety. The results …nd a strong, robust, negative e...

We formulate a consumption-based asset pricing model in which aggregate risk aversion is time-varying in response to both news about consumption growth (as in a habit formation model) and news about inflation. We estimate our model and explore its pricing implications for the term structure of interest rates and the cross-section of stock returns. Our empirical results support the hypothesis th...

We build and estimate a recursive utility equilibrium model of the term structure of interest rates that prices consistently all risk factors that affect bonds. We contrast it with an arbitrage-free model, where prices of risk are estimated freely without preference constraints. In both models, nominal bond yields are affine functions of macroeconomic state variables. The equilibrium model acco...

This paper comments on the multivariate GARCH modeling of federal funds and the 3-month Treasury bill rate by Kyrtsou and Vorlow. 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: G0; C4

The use of GARCH models with stable Paretian innovations in financial modeling has been recently suggested in the literature. This class of processes is attractive because it allows for conditional skewness and leptokurtosis of financial returns without ruling out normality. This contribution illustrates their usefulness in predicting the downside risk of financial assets in the context of mode...

We develop a two-country overlapping-generations model with domestic financial frictions and show that cross-country differences in financial development explain three recent patterns of international capital flows. In our model, domestic financial frictions distort the interest rates and production efficiency in the less financially developed country. Capital flows not only lead to cross-count...

We introduce habit formation in a model that studies the link between international trade in financial assets, economic growth, and welfare. As with time separable preferences asset trade increases the mean growth rate, but it also increases growth-volatility. We demonstrate that the welfare gain from asset trade is lower with habit persistence in consumption. This reflects that the habit-formi...

Premiums on U.S. sovereign CDS have risen to persistently elevated levels since the financial crisis. We ask whether these premiums reflect the probability of a fiscal default – a state in which budget balance can no longer be restored by raising taxes or eroding the real value of debt by raising inflation. We develop an equilibrium macrofinance model in which the fiscal and monetary policy sta...

Financial frictions affect the way in which different macroeconomic series respond to a monetary policy shock. We embed the financial accelerator of Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999) into a medium-scale DSGE model and evaluate the relative importance of financial frictions in explaining monetary transmission. Specifically, we apply minimum distance estimation based on impulse responses for...

A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model of real equity prices in Australia is specified to contain common shocks in international equity markets and domestic shocks in Australian financial and goods markets. Common shocks are identified through the long-run comovements of international equity markets, resulting in the model being characterized as having more shocks than variables. The e...