The benefits of international diversification have been recognized for decades. In spite of this, most investors hold nearly all of their wealth in domestic assets. In this paper, we construct new estimates of the international equity portfolio holdings of investors in the U.S., Japan, and...

This paper presents evidence on the characteristic speculative dynamics of a wide range of asset returns. It highlights three stylized facts. First, returns tend to be positively serially correlated at high frequency. Second, returns tend to be negatively serially correlated over long horizons....

This paper presents new evidence on the potential importance of 401(K) assets in contributing to the retirement resources of future retirees. We use data on past 401(k) participation rates by age and imcome decile, along with information on average 401(k) contribution rates, to project the...

This paper investigates the association between population age structure, particularly the share of the population in the saving years is motivated by the claim that the aging of the in the United States is a key factor in explaining the recent rise in asset values. It also addresses the...

The difference between reported price-earnings ratios in the United States and Japan is not as puzzling as it appears at first glance. Nearly half the disparity is caused by differences in accounting practices with respect to consolidation of earnings from subsidiaries and depreciation of fixed...

This paper estimates the fraction of the variance in aggregate stock returns that can be attributed to various kinds of news. First, we consider macroeconomic news and show that it is difficult to explain more than one third of the return variance from this source. Second, to explore the...

This paper analyzes the statistical evidence bearing on whether transitory components account for a large fraction of the variance in common stock returns. The first part treats methodological issues involved in testing for transitory return components. It demonstrates that variance ratios are...

This paper examines the potential influence of changing volatility in stock market prices on the level of stock market prices. It demonstrates that volatility is only weakly serially correlated, implying that shocks to volatility do not persist. These shocks can therefore have only a small...

This paper uses British data to examine the effects of dividend taxes on investors' relative valuation of dividends and capital gains. British data offer great potential to illuminate the dividends and taxes question, since there have been two radical changes and several minor reforms in British...

This paper summarizes the current state of research on how taxation affects household decisions with respect to portfolio structure and asset trading. It discusses long-standing issues, such as the impact of differential taxation of income flows from stocks and bonds on the incentives for...