We explore the relationship between sticky wages and risk. Like operating leverage, sticky wages are a source of risk for the firm. Firms, industries, regions, or times with especially high or rigid wages are especially risky. If wages are sticky, then wage growth should negatively forecast...

We study the impact of labor market frictions on asset prices. In the cross section of U.S. firms, a 10 percentage points increase in the firm's hiring rate is associated with a 1.5 percentage points decrease in the firm's annual risk premium. We propose an investment-based model with stochastic...

Optimal investment of firms implies that expected stock returns are tied with the expected marginal benefit of investment divided by the marginal cost of investment. Winners have higher expected growth and expected marginal productivity (two major components of the marginal benefit of...

In this paper, I show that the variance of Fama-French factors, the variance of the momentum factor, as well as the correlation between these factors, predict an important fraction of the time-series variation in post-1990 aggregate stock market returns. This predictability is particularly...

In a multiperiod investment framework, firms with high expected growth earn higher expected returns than firms with low expected growth, holding investment and expected profitability constant. This paper forms cross-sectional growth forecasts, and constructs an expected growth factor that yields...

Using a structural model of default, we construct a measure of systemic default defined as the probability that many firms default at the same time. We account for correlations in defaults between firms through exposures to common shocks. The systemic default measure spikes during recession...