We report strong evidence that changes of momentum, i.e. "acceleration", defined as the first difference of successive returns, provide better performance and higher explanatory power than momentum. The corresponding Γ-factor explains the momentum-sorted portfolios entirely but not the reverse....

Average skewness, which is defined as the average of monthly skewness values across firms, performs well at predicting future market returns. This result still holds after controlling for the size or liquidity of the firms or for current business cycle conditions. We also find that average...

We investigate the market-compatible degree of agent heterogeneity by identifying and analyzing the full range of conditional beliefs consistent with observed asset prices and good-deal bounds. Our methodology neither makes assumptions on underlying processes nor does it use survey data. It can...

We propose a unified set of distance-based performance metrics that address the power and extreme-error problems inherent in traditional measures for asset-pricing tests. From a Bayesian perspective, the distance metrics coherently incorporate both pricing errors and their standard errors....

We show how distributions can be reduced to low-dimensional scenario trees. Applied to intertemporal distributions, the scenarios and their probabilities become time-varying factors. From S&P 500 options, two or three time-varying scenarios suffice to forecast returns, implied variance or...

We build a macroeconomic model for Switzerland, the Euro Area, and the USA that drives the dynamics of several asset classes and the liabilities of a representative Swiss (defined-contribution) pension fund. This encompassing approach allows us to generate correlations between returns on assets...

In this paper, we document evidence that downside betas tend to comove more than upside betas during a financial crisis, but upside betas tend to comove more than the downside betas during financial booms. We find that the asymmetry between Downside-Beta Comovement and Upside-Beta Comovement is...

This paper proposes a model of asset-market equilibrium with portfolio delegation and optimal fee contracts. Fund managers and investors strategically interact to determine funds' investment profiles, while they share portfolio risk through fee contracts. In equilibrium, their investment...

We show that wealth processes in the block-shaped order book model of Obizhaeva/Wang converge to their counterparts in the reduced-form model proposed by Almgren/Chriss, as the resilience of the order book tends to infinity. As an application of this limit theorem, we explain how to reduce...

We study a search and bargaining model of an asset market, where investors' heterogeneous valuations for the asset are drawn from an arbitrary distribution. Our solution technique makes the model fully tractable and allows us to provide a full characterization of the unique equilibrium, in...