We investigate intermediary asset pricing theories empirically and find strong support for models that have intermediary leverage as the relevant state variable. A parsimonious model that uses detrended dealer leverage as a price-of-risk variable, and innovations to dealer leverage as a pricing...

Does the presence of arbitrageurs decrease equilibrium asset price volatility? I study an economy with arbitrageurs, informed investors, and noise traders. Arbitrageurs face a trade-off between arbitrage and inference: they would like to buy assets in response to temporary price declines (the...

We explore the cross-sectional pricing of volatility risk by decomposing equity market volatility into short- and long-run components. Our finding that prices of risk are negative and significant for both volatility components implies that investors pay for insurance against increases in...

We present estimates of the term structure of inflation expectations, derived from an affine model of real and nominal yield curves. The model features stochastic covariation of inflation with the real pricing kernel, enabling us to extract a time-varying inflation risk premium. We fit the model...

We show how to price the time series and cross section of zero coupon bonds via ordinary least squares regressions. Our approach allows computationally fast estimation of term structure models with a large number of pricing factors. Even though we do not impose cross-equation restrictions in the...

Fluctuations in the aggregate balance sheets of financial intermediaries provide a window on the joint determination of asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates. We document that financial intermediary balance sheets contain strong predictive power for future excess returns on a broad set of...

We present a parsimonious New Keynesian model that features financial vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities generate time varying downside risk of GDP growth by driving the dynamics of risk premia. Monetary policy impacts the output gap directly via the IS curve, and indirectly via its impact on...

Fluctuations in the aggregate balance sheets of financial intermediaries provide a window on the joint determination of asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates. We document that financial intermediary balance sheets contain strong predictive power for future excess returns on a broad set of...

In a financial system in which balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes appear immediately as changes in net worth, eliciting responses from financial intermediaries who adjust the size of their balance sheets. We document evidence that marked-to-market leverage is...

The financial crisis of 2007-09 highlighted the changing role of financial institutions and the growing importance of the shadow banking system, which grew out of the securitization of assets and the integration of banking with capital market developments. This trend was most pronounced in the...