A popular way to estimate a Pareto exponent is to run an OLS regression: log (Rank) = c - blog (Size), and take b as an estimate of the Pareto exponent. Unfortunately, this procedure is strongly biased in small samples. We provide a simple practical remedy for this bias, and argue that, if one...

If decision costs lead agents to update consumption every D periods, then econometricians will find an anomalously low correlation between equity returns and consumption growth (Lynch 1996). We analytically characterize the dynamic properties of an economy composed of consumers who have such...