Using unique data on Canadian households, we assess the impact of financial advisors on their clients' portfolios. We find that advisors induce their clients to take more risk, thereby raising expected returns. On the other hand, we find limited evidence of customization: advisors direct clients...

Most observers have concluded that while money markets and government bond markets are rapidly integrating following the introduction of the common currency in the euro area, there is little evidence that a similar integration process is taking place for retail banking. Data on cross-border...

We study a decentralized investment problem in which a CIO employs multiple asset managers to implement and execute investment strategies in separate asset classes. The CIO allocates capital to the managers who, in turn, allocate these funds to the assets in their asset class. This two-step...

I study expertise acquisition in a model of trading under asymmetric information. I propose and implement a method to estimate the ratio of social to private marginal value of expertise. This can be decomposed into three sufficient statistics: traders' average profits, the fraction of bad assets...

This paper extends the methodology developed in Chien, Cole and Lustig (2011 & 2012) (hereafter CCL2011 and CCL2012, respectively) to analyze and compute the equilibria of economies with heterogeneous agents who have different asset trading technologies and are subject to both aggregate and...

We study trading behavior and the properties of prices in informationally complex markets. Our model is based on the single-period version of the linear-normal framework of Kyle (1985). We allow for essentially arbitrary correlations among the random variables involved in the model: the value of...

Despite their strong positive average returns across numerous asset classes, momentum strategies can experience infrequent and persistent strings of negative returns. These momentum crashes are partly forecastable. They occur in "panic" states - following market declines and when market...

The large asset price jumps that took place during 2008 and 2009 disrupted volatility derivatives markets and caused the single-name variance swap market to dry up completely. This paper defines and analyzes a simple variance swap, a relative of the variance swap that in several respects has...

The last 15 years has brought forth an explosion of research on consumption-based asset pricing as a leading contender for explaining aggregate stock market behavior. This research has propelled further interest in consumption-based asset pricing, as well as some debate. This chapter surveys the...

In a model with heterogeneous-risk-aversion agents facing margin constraints, we show how securities' required returns are characterized both by their betas and their margin requirements. Negative shocks to fundamentals make margin constraints bind, lowering risk-free rates and raising Sharpe...