Working Papers

"The Economics of Options-Implied Inflation Probability Density Functions" (joint with Yuriy Kitsul)
Web Appendix.

"Forecasting Inflation" (with Jon Faust): Draft for Handbook of Forecasting.

"What does Monetary Policy do to Long-Term Interest Rates at the Zero Lower Bound?"
Web Appendix

"Credit Spreads as Predictors of Real-Time Economic Activity: A Bayesian Model Averaging Approach" (with Jon Faust, Simon Gilchrist and Egon Zakrajsek).

"Risk Premia in the 8:30 Economy" (with Jon Faust).

"State Space Models and MIDAS Regressions" (with Jennie Bai and Eric Ghysels).

"Evaluating Real-Time VAR Forecasts with an Informative democratic Prior".

Material For Published Papers

Web Appendix for "Macroeconomics and the Term Structure"

Excel Data From "Term Premia and Inflation Uncertainty: Empirical Evidence from an International Panel Dataset"

180.367 - Investments and Portfolio Management
This is an introductory course in investments. The course is broken into four parts. The first part covers the fundamental concepts of asset returns, risk, and risk-aversion, and then studies how investors should optimally choose their portfolios given the observed patterns of risk and return. The second part of the course studies the reverse question: given how investors choose their portfolios, what are the equilibrium patterns of risk and expected return in financial markets: in other words, what is the expected return that various types of assets must earn to compensate investors for bearing their risk. The second question is studied in the context of two theories of returns: the capital asset pricing model and arbitrage pricing theory. The third part of the course studies the empirical evidence for and against the equilibrium theories of asset returns, with an emphasis on the evidence in support and against the efficient markets hypothesis. The fourth and final part of the course studies three classes of assets in more detail. The topics that are covered include models of equity valuation, bond valuation and hedging, and option valuation and hedging.

Course Website

180.608 -- Macroeconometrics II
This course will cover a range of topics in time series econometrics and empirical macroeconomics and finance that arise in current research. This course should be taken by people with an interest in either empirical macro or empirical finance and is likely to be helpful to a graduate student with time-series empirical interests, especially in searching for a dissertation topic.

Course Website