Stock Market Cross-Sectional Skewness and Business Cycle Fluctuations

Abstract

Using U.S. data from 1926 to 2015, I show that financial skewness—a measure comparing cross-sectional upside and downside risks of the distribution of stock market returns of financial firms—is a powerful predictor of business cycle fluctuations. I then show that shocks to financial skewness are important drivers of business cycles, identifying these shocks using both vector autoregressions and a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Financial skewness appears to reflect the exposure of financial firms to the economic performance of their borrowers.