The relationship between the price of oil and the level of economic activity is a fundamental issue in macroeconomics. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about whether positive oil price shocks cause recessions in the United States (and other oil-importing countries), and although there exists a vast empirical literature that investigates the effects of oil price shocks, there are relatively few studies that investigate the direct effects of uncertainty about oil prices on the real economy. The book uses recent advances in macroeconomics and financial economics to investigate the effects of oil price shocks and uncertainty about the price of oil on the level of economic activity.

Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.

'Animal spirits' is a term that describes the instincts and emotions driving human behaviour in economic settings. In recent years, this concept has been discussed in relation to the emerging field of narrative economics. When unscheduled events hit the stock market, from corporate scandals and technological breakthroughs to recessions and pandemics, relationships driving returns change in unforeseeable ways. To deal with uncertainty, investors engage in narratives which simplify the complexity of real-time, non-routine change. This book assesses the novelty-narrative hypothesis for the U.S. stock market by conducting a comprehensive investigation of unscheduled events using big data textual analysis of financial news. This important contribution to the field of narrative economics finds that major macro events and associated narratives spill over into the churning stream of corporate novelty and sub-narratives, spawning different forms of unforeseeable stock market instability.

This book is a collection of feature articles published in Risks in 2020. They were all written by experts in their respective fields. In these articles, they all develop and present new aspects and insights that can help us to understand and cope with the different and ever-changing aspects of risks. In some of the feature articles the probabilistic risk modeling is the central focus, whereas impact and innovation, in the context of financial economics and actuarial science, is somewhat retained and left for future research. In other articles it is the other way around. Ideas and perceptions in financial markets are the driving force of the research but they do not necessarily rely on innovation in the underlying risk models. Together, they are state-of-the-art, expert-led, up-to-date contributions, demonstrating what Risks is and what Risks has to offer: articles that focus on the central aspects of insurance and financial risk management, that detail progress and paths of further development in understanding and dealing with...risks. Asking the same type of questions (which risk allocation and mitigation should be provided, and why?) creates value from three different perspectives: the normative perspective of market regulator; the existential perspective of the financial institution; the phenomenological perspective of the individual consumer or policy holder.

Up-to-Date Research Sheds New Light on This Area Taking into account the ongoing worldwide financial crisis, Stock Market Volatility provides insight to better understand volatility in various stock markets. This timely volume is one of the first to draw on a range of international authorities who offer their expertise on market volatility in devel

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Financial econometrics has developed into a very fruitful and vibrant research area in the last two decades. The availability of good data promotes research in this area, specially aided by online data and high-frequency data. These two characteristics of financial data also create challenges for researchers that are different from classical macro-econometric and micro-econometric problems. This Special Issue is dedicated to research topics that are relevant for analyzing financial data. We have gathered six articles under this theme.