The existing replication policies at top finance journals are far weaker than the policies at top economics journals. This paper explores both the costs and benefits of having a stronger replication policy in the context of my failed 2010 initiative to develop a unified policy across all top...

Incentives distort research findings. We now know that research findings favorable to the sponsor of the research should be discounted on the grounds of conflict of interest (e.g., tobacco companies or pharma companies). Is the same true in the field of finance? I argue that economic incentives...

We now know that research findings favorable to the sponsor of the research should be discounted on the grounds of conflict of interest (e.g., tobacco companies or pharma companies). Incentives distort research findings. Is the same true in the field of finance? I argue that economic incentives...

We apply state-of-the-art Bayesian machine learning to test whether we can extract valuable information from analysts' recommendations of stock performance. We use a probabilistic model for independent Bayesian classifier combination that has been successfully applied in both the physical and...

Machine learning offers a set of powerful tools that holds considerable promise for investment management. As with most quantitative applications in finance, the danger of misapplying these techniques can lead to disappointment. One crucial limitation involves data availability. Many of machine...

Recent studies show that volatility-managed equity portfolios realize higher Sharpe ratios than portfolios with a constant notional exposure. We show that this result only holds for “risk assets”, such as equity and credit, and link this to the so-called leverage effect for those assets. In...

Common risk metrics reported in academia include volatility, skewness, and factor exposures. The maximum drawdown statistic is rarely calculated, perhaps because it is path dependent and estimated with greater uncertainty. In practice, however, asset managers and fiduciaries routinely use the...

We analyze the results of the most recent survey of U.S. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) which looks ahead to the first quarter of 2006 and beyond. We present expectations of the equity risk premium measured over a 10-year horizon relative to a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond. This multi-year survey...

We test the mean-variance efficiency of a given portfolio with a Bayesian framework. Our test is more direct than Shanken's (1987), because we impose a prior on all the parameters of the multivariate regression model. The approach is also easily adapted to other problems. We use Monte Carlo...

This paper proposes tests of asset pricing models that allow for time variation in conditional covariances. The evidence indicates that the conditional covariances do change through time. Estimates of the expected excess return on the market divided by the variance of the market (reward-to-risk...