Financial crises typically occur because firms and financial institutions are highly exposed to
aggregate shocks. We propose a theory to explain these exposures. We study a model …

I study the real effects a contracting innovation that suddenly made financial markets more
complete: central clearing counterparties (CCPs) for derivatives. The first CCP to provide full …

This thesis consists of three self-contained essays evaluating topics in portfolio selection,
continuous-time analysis, and market incompleteness. The two opposing investment …

When the markets are incomplete, the law of one price no longer guarantees the
uniqueness of the stochastic discount factor (SDF), resulting in a set of admissible SDFs …

This dissertation studies macroeconomics with regional heterogeneity in three general
dimensions. First, it documents some novel empirical patterns of regional heterogeneity (in …