We construct a model for pricing sovereign debt that accounts for the risks of both default and restructuring, and allows for compensation for illiquidity. Using a new and relatively efficient method, we estimate the model using Russian dollar-denominated bonds.(...)

We provide the impact on asset prices of search-and-bargaining frictions in over-the-counter markets. Under natural conditions, prices are lower and illiquidity discounts higher when counterparties are harder to find, when sellers have less bargaining power, when the fraction of qualified owners...

We discuss how leverage can be monitored for institutions, individuals, and assets. While traditionally the interest rate has been regarded as the important feature of a loan, we argue that leverage is sometimes even more important. Monitoring leverage provides information about how risk builds...

The strategy of buying safe low-beta stocks while shorting (or underweighting) riskier high-beta stocks has been shown to deliver significant risk-adjusted returns. However, it has been suggested that such “low-risk investing” delivers high returns primarily due to its industry bet, favoring...

Many financial instruments are designed with embedded leverage such as options and leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs). Embedded leverage alleviates investors' leverage constraints and, therefore, we hypothesize that embedded leverage lowers required returns. Consistent with this hypothesis,...

Low-risk investing within equities and other asset classes has received a lot of attention over the past decade. An intensive academic debate has spurred, and been spurred by, the growing market for low-risk strategies. This article presents five fact and dispels five fictions about low-risk...

This paper studies equilibrium asset pricing with liquidity risk - the risk arising from unpredictable changes in liquidity over time. It is shown that a security's required return depends on its expected illiquidity and on the covariances of its own return and illiquidity with market return and...

This paper provides a model of the interaction between risk-management practices and market liquidity. On one hand, tighter risk management reduces the maximum position an institution can take, thus the amount of liquidity it can offer to the market. On the other hand, risk managers can take...

We study three cases in which specialized arbitrageurs lost significant amounts of capital and, as a result, became liquidity demanders rather than providers. The effects on security markets were large and persistent: Prices dropped relative to fundamentals and the rebound took months. While...

This paper solves explicitly an equilibrium asset pricing model with liquidity risk - the risk arising from unpredictable changes in liquidity over time. In our liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model, a security's required return depends on its expected liquidity, as well as on the...