This paper draws upon the modern science of finance to address several important practical issues in personal finance. Chief among these is how much to save for retirement and how to invest those savings. The paper suggests ways that advances in the theory of finance combined with innovations in...

This paper proposes a new approach to investing for retirement that takes advantage of recent market innovations and advances in finance theory to improve the risk/reward opportunities available to individual investors before and after retirement. The approach introduces three new elements:- It...

This paper examines the proposition that investing in common stocks is less risky the longer an investor plans to hold them. If the proposition were true, then the cost of insuring against earning less than the risk-free rate of interest should decline as the length of the investment horizon...

We investigate the cross-sectional determinants of corporate bond returns and find that downside risk is the strongest predictor of future bond returns. We also introduce common risk factors based on the prevalent risk characteristics of corporate bonds -- downside risk, credit risk, and...

This paper investigates the relationship between upside potential and future hedge fund returns. We measure upside potential based on the maximum monthly returns of hedge funds (MAX) over a fixed time interval, and show that MAX successfully predicts cross-sectional differences in future fund...

Economic theory predicts that a reduction in background risk should induce financial risk-taking, particularly for individuals with low stock market participation costs. Hence, health insurance coverage could affect financial risk-taking by offsetting health-related background risk. We use a...

We develop an ex-ante measure of expected stock returns based on analyst price targets. We then show that ex-ante measures of volatility, skewness, and kurtosis implied from stock option prices are positively related to the cross section of ex-ante expected stock returns. While expected returns...

Savings accounts are owned by most households, but little is known about the performance of households' investments. We create a unique dataset by matching information on individual savings accounts from the DNB Household Survey with market data on account-specific interest rates and...

The only retirement contract that both insures against longevity risk and hedges against inflation is a life annuity that is linked to the consumer price index (CPI). It is denominated in the same units of account as Social Security benefits. We call it a “real annuity,” although it is also...

The only retirement contract that both insures against longevity risk and hedges against inflation is a life annuity that is linked to the consumer price index (CPI). It is denominated in the same units of account as Social Security benefits. We call it a “real annuity,” although it is also...