Using a new survey of European households, we study how exogenous variation in the macroeconomic uncertainty perceived by households affects their spending decisions. We use randomized information treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of...

This paper is an investigation into the determinants of asymmetries in stock returns. We develop a series of cross-sectional regression specifications which attempt to forecast skewness in the daily returns of individual stocks. Negative skewness is most pronounced in stocks that have...

We investigate the portfolio choices of mean-variance-optimizing investors who use sample evidence to update prior beliefs centered on either risk-based or characteristic-based pricing models. With dogmatic beliefs in such models and an unconstrained ratio of position size to capital, optimal...

Previous studies have identified predetermined variables that have some power to explain the time series of stock and bond returns. This paper shows that loadings on the same variables also provide significant cross-sectional explanatory power for stock portfolio returns. These loadings are...

The Critical Finance Review commissioned Li, Novy-Marx, and Velikov (2017) and Pontiff and Singla (2019) to replicate the results in Pástor and Stambaugh (2003). Both studies successfully replicate our market-wide liquidity measure and find similar estimates of the liquidity risk premium. In...

We develop an asset-pricing model with endogenous corporate policies that explains how inflation jointly impacts real asset prices and corporate default risk. Our model includes two empirically grounded nominal frictions: fixed nominal coupons and sticky profitability. Taken together, these two...

We use a large-scale representative survey of households from October 19-21 that elicits respondents' expectations about the presidential election's outcome as well as their economic expectations to document several new facts. First, people disagree strongly about the likely outcome of the...

We develop a model of asset price bubbles based on the communication process between advisors and investors. Advisors are well-intentioned and want to maximize the welfare of their advisees (like a parent treats a child). But only some advisors understand the new technology (the tech-savvies);...

The paper estimates and examines the empirical plausibiltiy of asset pricing models that attempt to explain features of financial markets such as the size of the equity premium and the volatility of the stock market. In one model, the long run risks model of Bansal and Yaron (2004), low...