Search Results
Journal Article
On the Mechanics of Fiscal Inflations
The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we wish to better explain the relationship between Sargent and Wallace’s (1981) unpleasant monetarist arithmetic, the closely connected fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL), and the monetarist view of inflation. Second, we discuss how the recent inflationary episode has contributed to redistributing real resources from holders of government debt to the public purse. In particular, financial prices before the onset of the COVID pandemic suggest that investors viewed an inflationary shock such as the one we experienced as extremely unlikely, so the ...
Working Paper
Why Does the Yield-Curve Slope Predict Recessions?
Why is an inverted yield-curve slope such a powerful predictor of future recessions? We show that a decomposition of the yield curve slope into its expectations and risk premia components helps disentangle the channels that connect fluctuations in Treasury rates and the future state of the economy. In particular, a change in the yield curve slope due to a monetary policy easing, measured by the current real-interest rate level and its expected path, is associated with an increase in the probability of a future recession within the next year. In contrast, a decrease in risk premia is ...
Journal Article
Lifecycle investment decisions and labor income risk
The optimal proportion of financial wealth placed in stocks versus risk-free bonds changes over an investor's life and is very sensitive to the long-run correlation between stock returns and labor income. If this correlation is assumed to be high, then the optimal proportion of stock is hump-shaped and approximately zero for young agents, in contrast to the claims of financial advisers and most academic models.
Working Paper
Optimal Debt Dynamics, Issuance Costs, and Commitment
We investigate optimal capital structure and debt maturity policies in the presence of fixed issuance costs. We identify the global-optimal policy that generates the highest values of equity across all states of nature consistent with limited liability. The optimal policy without commitment provides almost as much tax benefits to debt as does the global-optimal policy and, in the limit of vanishing issuance costs, allows firms to extract 100% of EBIT. This limiting case does not converge to the equilibrium of DeMarzo and He (2019), who report no tax benefits to debt when issuance costs are ...
Working Paper
What does the CDS market imply for a U.S. default?
As the debt ceiling episode unfolds, we highlight a sharp increase in trading activity and liquidity in the U.S. credit default swaps (CDS) market, as well as a spike in U.S. CDS premiums. Compared with the periods leading up to the 2011 and 2013 debt ceiling episodes, we show that elevated CDS spreads in the current environment are partially explained by the cheapening of deliverable Treasury collateral to CDS contracts. We infer the likelihood of a U.S. default from these CDS premiums, and estimate an increase in the market-implied default probability from about 0.3–0.4% in 2022, to ...
Working Paper
Can standard preferences explain the prices of out-of-the-money S&P 500 put options?
The 1987 stock market crash occurred with minimal impact on observable economic variables (e.g., consumption), yet dramatically and permanently changed the shape of the implied volatility curve for equity index options. Here, we propose a general equilibrium model that captures many salient features of the U.S. equity and options markets before, during, and after the crash. The representative agent is endowed with Epstein-Zin preferences and the aggregate dividend and consumption processes are driven by a persistent stochastic growth variable that can jump. In reaction to a market crash, the ...
Working Paper
Asymmetric Information, Dynamic Debt Issuance, and the Term Structure of Credit Spreads
We propose a tractable model of a firm?s dynamic debt and equity issuance policies in the presence of asymmetric information. Because ?investment-grade? firms can access debt markets, managers who observe a bad private signal can both conceal this information and shield shareholders from infusing capital into the firm by issuing new debt to service existing debt, thus avoiding default. The implication is that the ?asymmetric information channel? can generate jumps to default (from the creditors? perspective) only for those "high-yield" firms that have exhausted their ability to borrow. ...
Working Paper
On the Mechanics of Fiscal Inflations
The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we wish to better explain the relationship between Sargent and Wallace’s (1981) unpleasant monetarist arithmetic, the closely connected fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL), and the monetarist view of inflation. Second, we discuss how the recent inflationary episode has contributed to redistributing real resources from holders of government debt to the public purse. In particular, financial prices before the onset of the Covid pandemic suggest that investors viewed an inflationary shock such as the one we experienced as extremely unlikely, so the ...
Working Paper
Core and 'Crust': Consumer Prices and the Term Structure of Interest Rates
We propose a no-arbitrage model that jointly explains the dynamics of consumer prices as well as the nominal and real term structures of risk-free rates. In our framework, distinct core, food, and energy price series combine into a measure of total inflation to price nominal Treasuries. This approach captures different frequencies in inflation fluctuations: Shocks to core are more persistent and less volatile than shocks to food and, especially, energy (the 'crust'). We find that a common structure of latent factors determines and predicts the term structure of yields and inflation. The model ...