Theoretical and empirical models of investment spending have treated financial structure very differently. Recent research has begun to narrow this gap and, based on developments in the economics of information, has drawn theoretical links between investment spending and the frictions and...

In this paper, we present a few simple market-timing strategies that appear to outperform the "buy-and-hold" strategy, with real-time data from 1970 to 2000. Our focus is on spreads between the E/P ratio of the S&P 500 index and interest rates. Extremely low spreads, as compared to their...

It has long been market folklore that the best time to buy stocks is when individual investors are bearish. We examine the forecast power of three popular measures of individual investor sentiment: the level of discounts on closed-end funds, the ratio of odd-lot sales to purchases, and net...

This paper uses annual data on 450 SIC four-digit manufacturing industries obtained from the NBER Manufacturing Productivity Database to examine how manufacturing industries respond to unanticipated changes in the federal funds rate. The analysis proceeds in three stages. First, industry price...