We investigate the association between voluntary disclosure and the risk-related discount investors apply to price. First, we study the association between (endogenous) disclosure choice and the discount in price induced by changes in the underlying model parameters: this informs empirical...

We question a deep-ingrained doctrine in asset pricing: If an empirical characteristic-return relation is consistent with investor "rationality," the relation must be "explained" by a risk factor model. The investment approach changes the big picture of asset pricing. Factors formed on...

A large amount of activity in the financial sector occurs in secondary financial markets, where securities are traded among investors without capital flowing to firms. The stock market is the archetypal example, which in most developed economies captures a lot of attention and resources. Is the...

Internal capital markets (ICMs) provide firms an alternative to costly external financing; however, they also provide an avenue to avoid the monitoring associated with issuing external capital. We argue that firms operating inefficient internal capital markets will avoid outside financing....

Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize that firms rationally adjust their investment to respond to discount rate changes. Consistent with the optimal investment hypothesis, we document that (i) the predictive power of accruals for future stock returns increases with...

Building on neoclassical reasoning, we propose a new multi-factor model that consists of the market factor and factor mimicking portfolios based on investment and productivity. The neo- classical three-factor model outperforms traditional factor models in explaining the average returns across...

This paper presents a simple framework for the use of traditional capital budgeting models and the valuation of several real options in the presence of shadow costs of incomplete information. Information costs can be viewed as sunk costs in the spirit of Merton’s (1987) model of capital market...

The neoclassical investment model matches cross-sectional asset prices both in first differences and in levels. With ten book-to-market deciles as the testing portfolios, the investment model largely matches the Tobin's Q spread and the average return spread across the extreme deciles. The...

The q-theory explanations of asset pricing anomalies are quantitatively important. We perform a new asset pricing test by using GMM to minimize the difference between average stock returns in the data and average investment returns constructed from observable firm characteristics. Under various...

In this study, we develop a technique for estimating a firm’s expected cost of equity capital derived from its stock price and analysts’ consensus earnings forecasts. Our estimation method, which is based on the residual income valuation model, extends and refines currently available...