We argue that the empirical evidence against the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) based on stock returns does not invalidate its use for estimating the cost of capital for projects in making capital budgeting decisions. Since stocks are backed not only by projects in place, but also the...

We show that a mutual fund's "stock selection skill" computed using the Daniel, Grinblatt, Titman and Wermers (1997) procedure can be decomposed into additional components that include impatient "informed trading" and "liquidity provision," thereby helping us understand how a fund creates value....

The poor performance of consumption-based asset pricing models relative to traditional portfolio-based asset pricing models is one of the great disappointments of the empirical asset pricing literature. We show that the external habit-formation model economy of Campbell and Cochrane (1999) can...

This paper investigates the relation between returns on stock indices and their corresponding futures contracts in order to evaluate potential explanations for the pervasive yet anomalous evidence of positive, short-horizon portfolio autocorrelations. Using a simple theoretical framework, we...

We build a model of emerging markets crises which features two types of collateral constraints. Firms in a domestic economy have limited borrowing capacity from international investors. They also have limited borrowing capacity with respect to each other. We study how the presence of and changes...

While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions...