Using individual-level data on homeowner debt and defaults from 1997 to 2008, we show that borrowing against the increase in home equity by existing homeowners is responsible for a significant fraction of both the rise in U.S. household leverage from 2002 to 2006 and the increase in defaults...

We show that, when forming expectations about aggregate inflation, consumers rely on the prices of goods in their personal grocery bundles. Our analysis uses novel representative micro data that uniquely match individual expectations, detailed information about consumption bundles, and...

We perform a comparative analysis of machine learning methods for the canonical problem of empirical asset pricing: measuring asset risk premia. We demonstrate large economic gains to investors using machine learning forecasts, in some cases doubling the performance of leading regression-based...

The academic literature literally contains hundreds of variables that seem to predict the cross-section of expected returns. This so-called ‘anomaly zoo' has caused many to question whether researchers are using the right tests of statistical significance. But, here's the thing: even if...

Do accruals-based accounting earnings provide better information to investors about future operating cash flows than operating cash flows themselves, as predicted by FASB's conceptual framework? The most recent evidence (Nallareddy et al., 2020) is that operating cash flows, measured correctly...

Variables with strong marginal explanatory power in cross-section asset pricing regressions typically show less power to produce increments to average portfolio returns, for two reasons. (i) Adding an explanatory variable can attenuate the slopes in a regression. (ii) Adding a variable with...

We explore what private market data can tell us about the appropriate discount rates for valuing investments in climate change abatement. We estimate the term structure of discount rates for real estate up to the very long horizons relevant for investments in climate change abatement. The...

Expectations about macro-finance variables, such as inflation, vary significantly across genders, even within the same household. We conjecture that traditional gender roles expose women and men to different economic signals in their daily lives, which in turn produce systematic variation in...

This paper shows individuals' product market choices influence their investment decisions. Using microdata from the brokerage and automotive industries, we find a strong positive relation between customer relationship, ownership of a company, and size of the ownership stake. Investors also are...

The aggregate portfolio of Chinese actively managed stock mutual funds exhibits a large and significantly positive alpha. Results from bootstrap simulations indicate that most Chinese active stock mutual fund managers have skill. A substantial amount of their outperformance can be attributed to...