In contrast to the standard economics theory, an analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finance shows that wealthy investors have a higher return on their stocks than their poorer counterparts. The paper presents a general financial and economic theory of risk and search behavior to address the...

This paper presents a continuous time model of a firm that can dynamically adjust both its capital structure and its investment choices. The model extends the existing literature by endogenizing the investment choice as well as firm value, which are both determined by an exogenous price process...

Tobin's Q exceeds one, even without any adjustment costs, for a firm that earns rents as a result of monopoly power or of decreasing returns to scale in production. Even when there are no adjustment costs and marginal Q is always equal to one, Tobin's Q is informative about the firm's growth...

This paper studies the provision of incentives to reallocate capital when managers are reluctant to relinquish control and have private information about the productivity of assets under their control. We show that when managers get private benefits from running projects substantial bonuses are...

Residential investment before the mid 1980s was very volatile and since then it has been much less volatile. Before the 1980s mortgage markets were highly regulated and mortgage opportunities were limited, while large numbers of baby-boom households were acquiring their first house. Since 1980...

We determine empirically how the Big Three automakers accommodate shocks to demand. They have the capability to change prices, alter labor inputs through temporary layoffs and overtime, or adjust inventories. These adjustments are interrelated, non-convex, and dynamic in nature. Combining weekly...

Empirical evidence suggests that capital separation is an important phenomenon over and beyond depreciation and that reallocation is a costly and time-consuming process. In addition, both separation and reallocation rates display substantial variation over the business cycle. We build a dynamic...

We study optimal capital taxation under limited commitment. We prove that the optimal tax rate on capital income should be positive in steady state and should be increasing over time provided that full risk-sharing is not feasible. In a limited commitment environment, a one unit increase of...