ESSAYS ON INTERNATIONAL RISK SHARING

Abstract

International risk sharing is an intertemporal utility maximizing process in which countries of different economic prospects engage in cross-border trade and financial asset transactions to mitigate impacts of idiosyncratic income shocks on consumption. Measuring the extent of international risk sharing (IRS) remains an open empirical question. This dissertation provides a new approach to measuring the extent of IRS for countries and conditions for the measure of consumption correlation to hold and a possible cause to the consumption correlation puzzle.