Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize that firms rationally adjust their investment to respond to discount rate changes. Consistent with the optimal investment hypothesis, we document that (i) the predictive power of accruals for future stock returns increases with...

Building on neoclassical reasoning, we propose a new multi-factor model that consists of the market factor and factor mimicking portfolios based on investment and productivity. The neo- classical three-factor model outperforms traditional factor models in explaining the average returns across...

We question a deep-ingrained doctrine in asset pricing: If an empirical characteristic-return relation is consistent with investor "rationality," the relation must be "explained" by a risk factor model. The investment approach changes the big picture of asset pricing. Factors formed on...

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...

Optimal investment of firms implies that expected stock returns are tied with the expected marginal benefit of investment divided by the marginal cost of investment. Winners have higher expected growth and expected marginal productivity (two major components of the marginal benefit of...

A large amount of activity in the financial sector occurs in secondary financial markets, where securities are traded among investors without capital flowing to firms. The stock market is the archetypal example, which in most developed economies captures a lot of attention and resources. Is the...

The neoclassical investment model matches cross-sectional asset prices both in first differences and in levels. With ten book-to-market deciles as the testing portfolios, the investment model largely matches the Tobin's Q spread and the average return spread across the extreme deciles. The...

Adding a return factor based on capital investment into standard, calendar-time factor regressions makes underperformance following seasoned equity offerings largely insignificant and reduces its magnitude by 37-46%. The reason is that issuers invest more than nonissuers matched on size and...

The consequences of information differences across investors in capital markets are still much debated. This paper examines the relation between information differences across investors and the cost of capital, and makes three points. First, in models of perfect competition, information...

We show that measurable managerial characteristics have significant explanatory power for corporate financing decisions beyond traditional capital-structure determinants. First, managers who believe that their firm is undervalued view external financing as overpriced, especially equity. Such...