Introductory lectures on capital theory often begin by analyzing the following problem: I have a tree which will be worth X(t) if cut down at time t. If the discount rate is r, when should the tree be cut down? What is the present value of such a tree? The answers to these questions are...

Aggregate production functions are reduced-form relationships that emerge endogenously from input-output interactions between heterogeneous producers and factors in general equilibrium. We provide a general methodology for analyzing such aggregate production functions by deriving their first-...

We generalize the seminal Gibbons-Ross-Shanken test to the empirically relevant case where the number of test assets far exceeds the number of observations. In such a setting, one needs to use a regularized estimator of the covariance matrix of test assets, which leads to biases in the original...

A lot! Profitability subsumes all of "quality" investing, explaining both the performance of the strategies that industry markets and the factors that academics employ. It also has striking power pricing "defensive equity" strategies that overweight low-beta or low-volatility stocks....

Return prediction with Random Fourier Features (RFF)--a very large number, P , of nonlinear trans-formations of a small number, K, of predictor variables--has become popular recently. Surprisingly, this approach appears to yield a successful out-of-sample stock market index timing strategy even...

Intermediary asset pricing posits that financial institutions are important players in financial markets, and that their decisions shape asset prices beyond simply reflecting the preferences of the average household in the economy. We explain how the intermediary-asset pricing approach helps...

Firm characteristics, based on accounting and financial market data, are commonly used to represent firms in economics and finance. However, investors collectively use a much richer information set beyond firm characteristics, including sources of information that are not readily available to...

We show that the higher-orders and their interactions of the common sparse linear factors can effectively subsume the factor zoo. We propose a forward selection Fama-MacBeth procedure as a method to estimate a high-dimensional stochastic discount factor model, isolating the most relevant...

This paper develops a complete-market production economy with heterogeneous beliefs about TFP growth. Hiring occurs before TFP is known and is, therefore, risky (operational leverage). The firm's discount factor depends on a wealth-weighted average of investors' beliefs. Waves of optimism...

Workhorse Gaussian affine term structure models (ATSMs) attribute time-varying bond risk premia entirely to changing prices of risk, while structural models with recursive preferences credit it completely to stochastic volatility. We reconcile these competing channels by introducing a novel form...