This paper studies average and conditional expected returns in national equity markets, and their relation to a number of fundamental country attributes. The attributes are organized into three groups. The first is relative valuation ratios, such as price-to-book-value, cash-flow, earnings and...

Financial openness is often associated with higher rates of economic growth. We show that the impact of openness on factor productivity growth is more important than the effect on capital growth. This explains why the growth effects of liberalization appear to be largely permanent, not...

We propose a new, valuation-based measure of world equity market segmentation. While we observe decreased levels of segmentation in many developing countries, the level of segmentation is still significant. In contrast to previous research, we characterize the factors that account for variation...

We study the interrelationship between capital flows, returns, dividend yields and world interest rates in 20 emerging markets. We estimate a vector autoregressionn with these variables to measure the degree to which lower interest rates contribute to increased capital flows and shocks in flows...

At a time of historic challenges to the viability of the Eurozone, we assess the contribution of the EU and the Euro to equity market integration in Europe. We use a simple and essentially model free measure of bilateral market segmentation: two countries are segmented if there is a wide...

This paper uses a unique dataset to study how firms managed liquidity during the financial crisis. Our analysis provides new insights on the interactions between internal liquidity, external funds, and real corporate decisions, such as investment and employment. We first describe how companies...

Using a unique 10-year panel that includes more than 13,300 expected stock market return probability distributions, we find that executives are severely miscalibrated, producing distributions that are too narrow: realized market returns are within the executives' 80% confidence intervals only...

We survey more than 1,000 CEOs and CFOs to understand how capital is allocated, and decision-making authority is delegated, within firms. We find that CEOs are least likely to share or delegate decision-making authority in mergers and acquisitions, relative to delegation of capital structure,...

We survey 1,050 CFOs in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to assess whether their firms are credit constrained during the global credit crisis of 2008. We study whether corporate spending plans differ conditional on this measure of financial constraint. Our evidence indicates that constrained firms...

While gold objects have existed for thousands of years, gold's role in diversified portfolios is not well understood. We critically examine popular stories such as 'gold is an inflation hedge'. We show that gold may be an effective hedge if the investment horizon is measured in centuries. Over...