We analyze four centuries of stock prices and dividends in the Dutch, English, and U.S. market. With the exception of the post-1945 period, the dividend-to-price ratio is stationary and predicts returns throughout all four centuries. “Excess volatility” is thus a pervasive feature of...

American options on the S&P 500 index futures that violate the stochastic dominance bounds of Constantinides and Perrakis (2007) from 1983 to 2006 are identified as potentially profitable trades. Call bid prices more frequently violate their upper bound than put bid prices do, while violations...

Widespread violations of stochastic dominance by one-month S&P 500 index call options over 1986-2006 imply that a trader can improve expected utility by engaging in a zero-net-cost trade net of transaction costs and bid-ask spread. Although pre-crash option prices conform to the...