This paper reexamines the ability of dividend yields to predict long-horizon stock returns. The authors use the bootstrap methodology, as well as simulations, to examine the distribution of test statistics under the null hypothesis of no forecasting ability. These experiments are constructed so...

This article applies autoregression and rescaled range statistics to very long stock market series to test the hypothesis that long-term temporal dependencies are present in financial data. For the annual capital appreciation returns to the London Stock Exchange, evidence of persistence in raw...

Simulation techniques allow the author to examine the behavior and accuracy of several repeat sales regression estimators used to construct real estate return indices. He shows that the generalized least squares (GLS) method is the maximum likelihood estimator, and he shows how estimation...

This article uses recent measures of the risk and return to investment in housing to estimate the effects of including a single family home in the investor portfolio. We estimate the expected return and standard deviation of that return, as well as its correlation with other major investment...

This paper uses a unique data set on screenplay sales to learn how the information content of a sales pitch affects sale prices. This is one of the few studies that analyze “soft information” outside the banking industry. We find that “soft information” proxies, such as the descriptive...

Aggregate art price patterns mask a lot of underlying variation--both in the time series and in the cross- section. We argue that, to increase our understanding of the market for aesthetics, it is helpful to take a micro perspective on the formation of art prices, and acknowledge that each...

Alfred Cowles' (1934) test of the Dow Theory apparently provided strong evidence against the ability of Wall Street's most famous chartist to forecast the stock market. In this paper, we review Cowles' evidence and find that it supports the contrary conclusion -- that the Dow Theory, as applied...

Using a sample of daily net flows to nearly 1,000 U.S. mutual funds over a year and a half period, we identify a set of systematic factors that explain a significant amount of the variation in flows. This suggests the existence of a common component to mutual fund investor behavior and indicates...

Home ownership increases the incentive to maintain property and neighborhood, as well as decreasing the outflow of rents from low-income zones. However, these benefits are not costless to homeowners. With a mortgage comes the possibility of default, the financial demands of maintenance, a...