Performance evaluation of venture-capital (VC) payoffs is challenging because payoffs are infrequent, skewed, realized over endogenously varying time horizons, and cross- sectionally dependent. We show that standard stochastic discount factor (SDF) methods can be adapted to handle these issues....

We study IPOs by focusing on the degree of portfolio diversification of the shareholders taking the company public. We argue that a less diversified shareholder has more to gain from taking the company public and would be more willing to accept a lower price for the sale of its shares, i.e....

Dealers in over-the-counter securities form networks to mitigate search frictions. The audit trail for municipal bonds shows the dealer network has a core-periphery structure. Central dealers are more efficient at matching buyers and sellers than peripheral dealers, which shortens intermediation...

Theoretical asset pricing models routinely assume that investors have heterogeneous information. We provide direct evidence of the importance of information asymmetry for asset prices and investor demands using plausibly exogenous variation in the supply of information caused by the closure or...

The reduced accuracy of credit ratings on structured finance products in the boom just preceding the financial crisis has prompted investigation into the business of Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs). While CRAs have long held that their behavior is disciplined by reputational concerns, the value of...

This paper evaluates models with idiosyncratic consumption risk using Hansen and Jagannathan’s (1991) volatility bounds. It is shown that idiosyncratic risk does not change the volatility bounds at all when consumers have constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) preferences and the distribution...

This paper uncovers the changes in the cross-sectional distribution of idiosyncratic volatility of stocks over the period 1963--2008. The contribution of the top decile to the total market idiosyncratic volatility increased, while the contribution of the bottom decile decreased. We introduce a...

This Paper studies whether the consumption-based asset-pricing model can explain the cross-section of Sharpe ratios. The constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) model and several extensions (habit persistence, recursive utility and idiosyncratic shocks) all imply that the Sharpe ratio is linearly...

In this paper we document new results regarding the forward premium puzzle. The often found negative correlation between the expected currency depreciation and interest rate differential is, contrary to popular belief, not a pervasive phenomenon. It is confined to developed economies, and here...

Macroeconomic models with financial frictions typically imply that the excess return on a well-diversified portfolio of corporate bonds is close to zero. In contrast, the empirical finance literature documents large and time-varying risk premia in the corporate bond market (the "credit spread...