We show, using machine learning, that fund characteristics can consistently differentiate high from low-performing mutual funds, as well as identify funds with net-of-fees abnormal returns. Fund momentum and fund flow are the most important predictors of future risk-adjusted fund performance,...

We show that the COVID-19 pandemic brought house price and rent declines in city centers, and price and rent increases away from the center, thereby flattening the bid-rent curve in most U.S. metropolitan areas. Across MSAs, the flattening of the bid-rent curve is larger when working from home...

If the U.S. is on a fiscally sustainable path, then higher U.S. government debt/output ratios should reliably predict higher future surpluses or lower real returns on Treasurys. In the post-war sample, we find no evidence for this. Neither future cash flows nor discount rates account for the...

Governments around the world have gone on a massive fiscal expansion in response to the Covid crisis, increasing government debt to levels not seen in 75 years. How will this debt be repaid? What role do conventional and unconventional monetary policy play? We investigate debt sustainability in...

We study three centuries of U.K. fiscal history. Before WW-I, when the U.K. dominated global bond markets, the U.K.'s government debt was not always fully backed by its future surpluses, even after accounting for the seigniorage revenue from convenience yields. As predicted by theories of safe...

Governments face a trade-off between insuring bondholders and taxpayers. If the government fully insures bondholders by manufacturing risk-free zero-beta debt, then it cannot also insure taxpayers against permanent macroeconomic shocks over long horizons. Instead, taxpayers will pay more in...

Real and private-value assets--defined here as the sum of real estate, infrastructure, collectibles, and non-corporate business equity--is an investment class worth an estimated $85 trillion in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, private values can affect pricing in many other financial markets, such...