We examine the reaction of daily bond prices to the release of government macroeconomic news. These news releases are of interest because they are released on periodic, preannounced dates and because they cause substantial bond market volatility. The news component of volatility is not...

Stocks can be overpriced when short sale constraints bind. We study the costs of short selling equities, 1926-1933, using the publicly observable market for borrowing stock. Some stocks are sometimes expensive to short, and it appears that stocks enter the borrowing market when shorting demand...

Real estate investment trust (REIT) stock prices deviate substantially from net asset values (NAV). Using REIT data since 1990, we find large positive excess returns to a strategy of buying stocks that trade at a discount to NAV, and shorting stocks trading at a premium to NAV. Estimated alphas...

We test whether the time-series positive correlation of inflation and intermarket relative price variability is also present in a cross-section of US cities. We find this correlation to be a robust empirical regularity: cities which have higher than average inflation also have higher than...

Does corporate diversification reduce shareholder value? Since firms endogenously choose to diversify, exogenous variation in diversification is necessary in order to draw inferences about the causal effect. We examine changes in the within-firm dispersion of industry investment, or diversity.'...

In the presence of principal-agent problems, published macroeconomic forecasts by professional economists may not measure expectations. Forecasters may use their forecasts in order to manipulate beliefs about their ability. I test a cross-sectional implication of models of reputation and...

I study battles between short sellers and firms. Firms use a variety of methods to impede short selling, including legal threats, investigations, lawsuits, and various technical actions intended to create a short squeeze. These actions create short sale constraints. Consistent with the...

The aggregate dividend payout ratio forecasts aggregate excess returns on both stocks and corporate bonds in post-war US data. Both high corporate profits and high stock prices forecast low excess returns on equities. When the payout ratio is high, expected returns are high. The payout ratio's...

Capital expenditure plans at the beginning of the year, from a US government survey of firms, explain more than three quarters of the variation in real annual aggregate investment growth between 1948 and 1993. The negative correlation of contemporaneous investment and stock returns is explained...

We provide a model of closed-end fund pricing which includes investors who do not form expectations correctly and allows for salient country-specific news to affect this expectation formation process. We use panel data on prices and net asset values of closed- end country funds to examine...