Industry characteristics explain the cross section of investment returns among industries consisting primarily of private rms as well as among industries composed mostly of public rms. For both types of industries, common asset pricing models explain the cross-sectional variation of...

Firm level characteristics explain the cross section of investment returns of industry portfolios that include listed and unlisted firms. Moreover, common asset pricing models explain the cross-sectional variation of characteristic-based investment returns which include listed and unlisted...

Within a broad sample of US manufacturing firms, we find that, controlling for investment opportunities and financial constraints, increased governance quality is associated with higher levels of investment. Increased governance quality is also associated with greater responsiveness of...

The output gap, a production based macroeconomic variable, is a strong predictor of stock and bond returns. It is a prime business cycle indicator that does not include the level of market prices, thus removing any suspicion that returns are forecastable due to a fad in prices being washed away....

The output gap, a production based macroeconomic variable, is a strong predictor of US stock returns. It is a prime business cycle indicator that does not include the level of market prices, thus removing any suspicion that returns are forecastable due to a quot;fadquot; in prices being washed...

Discount rate variation is driven by a short run business cycle component and a longer run trend component. This leads to state variable hedging of these two components and ICAPM logic implies a three factor model for expected returns. The factors represent cash ow news, short term discount rate...

Value and momentum returns and combinations of them are explained by their loadings on global macroeconomic risk factors across both countries and asset classes. These loadings describe why value and momentum have positive return premia while at the same time being negatively correlated. The...

We uncover a positive relationship between firms' corporate governance quality, as measured by the degree of managerial entrenchment, and the quality of their real investment decisions. Firms whose managers are less entrenched invest more, invest more in line with their investment opportunities...

The spread in average returns between low and high asset growth and investment portfolios is largely accounted for by their spread in systematic risk, as measured by the Chen, Roll and Ross (1986) factors. In addition, systematic risk and volatility fall sharply during large investment periods....

We conduct an empirical investigation of an emerging strand of models, pioneered by Berk, Green and Naik (1999), relating firms' real investment behavior under investment irreversibility and asset return dynamics. The models in this literature share many of the same predictions. We first extend...