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...

Using theories from the behavioral finance literature to predict that investors are attracted to industries with more salient outcomes and that therefore firms in such industries have higher valuations, we find that firms in industries that have high industry-level dispersion of profitability...

Because uncertainty is high in bad times, investors find it harder to assess firm prospects and, hence, should value analyst output more. However, higher uncertainty makes analysts' tasks harder so it is unclear if analyst output is more valuable in bad times. We find that, in bad times, analyst...

A detailed treatment of aggregation and capital heterogeneity substantially improves the performance of the investment CAPM. Firm-level predicted returns are constructed from firm-level accounting variables and aggregated to the portfolio level to match with portfolio-level stock returns....

Management, directly or indirectly, learns from its firm's stock price, so that a more informative stock price should make the firm more productive. We show that stock price informativeness increases firm productivity. We predict and confirm that the productivity of smaller and younger firms,...

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...