This paper provides evidence that managers adjust firm advertising, in part, to attract investor attention and influence short-term stock returns. First, I show that increased advertising spending is associated with a contemporaneous rise in retail buying and abnormal stock returns, and is...

We study a simple rational expectations (RE) model whose asset pricing implications address some of the short-run mispricings, informational inefficiencies, and overreactions observed in real markets, without a need to resort to behavioral assumptions. We accomplish this by relying on the...

We provide a historical perspective focusing on Ziemba's experiences and research on the bond-stock earnings yield differential model (BSEYD) starting from when he first used it in Japan in 1988 through to the present in 2014. The model has called many but not all crashes. Those called have high...

One of the most contentious issues raised during the recent crisis has been the potentially exacerbating role played by mark-to-market accounting. Many have proposed the use of historical cost accounting, promoting its ability to avoid the amplification of systemic risk. We caution against...

We consider a noisy rational expectations equilibrium in a multi-asset economy populated by informed and uninformed investors, and noise traders. Informed investors privately observe an aggregate risk factor affecting the probabilities of different states of the economy. Uninformed investors...

This paper shows that the systematic risk (or "beta") of individual stocks increases by an economically and statistically signi…cant amount on days of firm-specific news announcements, and reverts to its average level two to five days later. We employ intra-daily data and recent advances in...

By connecting stocks through common active mutual fund ownership, we forecast cross-sectional variation in return covariance, controlling for similarity in style (in- dustry, size, value, and momentum), the extent of common analyst coverage, and other pair characteristics. We argue this...

This paper shows that smoking intensity, i.e. the amount of nicotine extracted per cigarette smoked, responds to changes in excise taxes and tobacco prices. We exploit data covering the period 1988 to 2006 across many US states. Moreover, we provide new evidence on the importance of cotinine...

Theory predicts that optimal effective corporation tax rates will be negatively related to industry specific sunk costs, and hence industry concentration. Governments should tax industries with monopolistic power softly. Evidence suggests that this Schumpeterian (1942) principle of corporate...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...