We combine the dynamic dividend-discount model with an accounting-based vector autoregression framework that allows for a decomposition of EU banks' stock returns to cash-flow and expected return news components. The main findings are that while the bulk of the variability of EU banks' stock...

This research addresses whether geographic diversification provides benefits over industry diversification. In the absence of constraints, no empirical evidence is found to support the argument that country diversification is superior. With short-selling constraints, however, the geographic...

We consider the problem of portfolio selection within the classical Markowitz meanvariance optimizing framework, which has served as the basis for modern portfolio theory for more than 50 years. Efforts to translate this theoretical foundation into a viable portfolio construction algorithm have...

I investigate the effect of wealth on consumption in a new dataset with financial and housing wealth from 16 countries. The baseline estimation method based on the sluggishness of consumption growth implies that the eventual (long-run) marginal propensity to consume out of total wealth is 5...

This paper presents a simple new method for measuring `wealth effects' on aggregate consumption. The method exploits the stickiness of consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption `habits') to distinguish between immediate and eventual wealth effects. In U.S. data, we...

Using a new nationally representative survey of financial capability and experience in the UK and Ireland, I investigate the key factors that cause individuals to experience financial distress. In this context, a key area that I focus on is whether individuals’ behavioural traits, such as...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System in the period 2000 to 2010. We find that active investors outperform passive investors, and that there is a causal effect of fund changes on performance. Chosen funds...

This paper investigates the institutional investor allocations to real assets, private equity and hedge funds. Institutional investors delegate 85 percent of the asset management of their alternative investments to external managers and fund-of-funds. Institutions relying on these financial...

We study portfolio choice for a finite-horizon investor whose labor income is cointegrated with inflation. We show that this long-run relationship has substantial impact on the riskiness of human capital and consequently on the optimal portfolio strategy. Because cointegration raises the...

American university and college endowments now hold close to one-third of their portfolios in private equity and hedge funds. We estimate the implied beliefs of endowments about alternative assets' returns relative to equities and bonds. At the end of 2012, the typical endowment believes that...