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Working Paper
Risk Appetite and Monetary Transmission
We construct a new high-frequency measure of risk appetite shifts around Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings, the common component of changes in risk-sensitive indicators. Fed policy actions and communication have substantial effects on risk appetite. Interest-rate surprises explain only about one-fifth of the variation in risk appetite, so most policy-induced changes in risk asset prices are orthogonal to the expected rate path. We therefore use both surprises as external instruments in a proxy SVAR with two separately identified shocks. Risk appetite shocks have large and ...