We propose a novel way of measuring the equity portfolio-level environmental and social characteristics of a 13F institution (the “sustainability footprint”) and examine the relation between sustainability footprints and risk-adjusted investment performance. The analysis shows that 13F...

We introduce the class of linear-rational term structure models in which the state price density is modeled such that bond prices become linear-rational functions of the factors. This class is highly tractable with several distinct advantages: i) ensures nonnegative interest rates, ii) easily...

Across numerous asset classes, momentum strategies have historically generated high Sharpe ratios and strong positive alphas relative to standard asset pricing models. However, the returns to momentum strategies are negatively skewed: they experience infrequent but strong and persistent strings...

Large institutional investors own an increasing share of equity markets in the U.S. The implications of this development for financial markets are still unclear. The paper presents novel empirical evidence that ownership by large institutions predicts higher volatility and greater noise in stock...

The paper proposes a framework for large-scale portfolio optimization which accounts for all the major stylized facts of multivariate financial returns, including volatility clustering, dynamics in the dependency structure, asymmetry, heavy tails, and nonellipticity. It introduces a so-called...

Both educational expenditures and attainment have increased sharply over the last decades, despite rising prices of education, and stagnating income returns to human capital. This paper emphasizes conditional employment risks diversification as additional motivation for education demand. Job...

We study a financial network where forced liquidations of an illiquid asset have a negative impact on its price, thus reinforcing network contagion. We give conditions for uniqueness of the clearing asset price and liability payments. Our main result holds under mild and natural assumptions on...

We use a dynamic model of financing decisions to measure agency conflicts for a large panel of 12,652 firms from 14 countries. Our estimates show that agency conflicts are large and vary significantly across firms and countries. Differences in agency conflicts are largely due to differences in...