We build an equilibrium model to explain why stock return predictability concentrates in bad times. The key feature is that investors use different forecasting models, and hence assess uncertainty differently. As economic conditions deteriorate, uncertainty rises and investors' opinions...

Using US data from June 1984 to July 1999, we show that the impact of firm-specificcharacteristics like size and book-to-price on future excess stock returns varies considerably overtime. The impact can be either positive or negative at different times. This time variation ispartially...

Using a unique proprietary account-level trading dataset in China, we investigate how active information acquisition alleviates price-based return comovement, a typical anomaly in stock splits. We find that: 1) individual trading drives the comovement and the trading correlation between split...

During financial crises, financial market regulators often restrict short-selling to support prices and curb volatility. However, evidence suggests that short-selling bans during the turmoil in financial markets in 2007--2009 failed to achieve regulators' goals. We analyze a model of costly...

Using a novel dataset containing investors' access of company filings through the SEC's EDGAR system, we show that the abnormal number of IPs searching for firms' financial statements strongly predicts future stock returns and firm fundamentals. Consistent with theories of costly information...

We propose a simple measure of investor sophistication based on financial statement experience derived from publicly available EDGAR log data about accounting information acquisition activity. This approach allows us to provide unique empirical evidence for the existence of attention induced...