This note investigates the causes of the quality anomaly, which is one of the strongest and most scalable anomalies in equity markets. We explore two potential explanations. The "risk view", whereby investing in high quality firms is somehow riskier, so that the higher returns of a quality...

Economics is increasingly adopting the methodological standards and procedures of the natural sciences. The paper analyzes this 'naturalistic turn' from the philosophical perspective on naturalism, and I discuss the implications for the field of finance. The theory of finance is an interesting...

This essay looks at the bidirectional relationship between financial history and financial economics. It begins by giving a brief history of financial economics by outlining the main topics of interest to financial economists. It then documents and explains the increasing influence of financial...

This paper establishes a new empirical fact: mutual funds' flow-performance sensitivity is a hump-shaped function of aggregate risk-factor realizations. Explanations based on extant theories can only explain a fraction of the pattern. We thus develop a new parsimonious model. It assumes Bayesian...

We use the tools of mechanism design, combined with the theory of risk measures, to analyze a model where a cash constrained owner of an asset with stochastic returns raises capital from a population of investors that di¤er in their risk aversion and budget constraints. The distribution of the...

Americans now hold over $1 trillion in cryptocurrencies. Has $1 trillion in wealth been created? From the standpoint of economic theory, the answers is no. The wealth of a society consists of its real assets that produce consumable goods and services. Unless a cryptocurrency provides some type...

We examine whether initial returns influence investors' decisions to return to the stock market following withdrawal. Using a survival analysis technique to estimate Finnish retail investors' likelihood of stock market re-entry reveals that investors who experience lower initial returns are less...

Chinese fund manager performance is interesting because in a market dominated by speculative retail trading, we expect professional fund managers to have persistent edge. Using data on the Chinese mutual fund industry, the authors compute a new skill measure to identify exceptional funds with...

Stock prices are generally governed by rational inputs and irrationality in the market can cause only daily, weekly and short run fluctuations. While irrationality takes prices away from its intrinsic value, rationality brings it back. Contrarian investment strategy is followed under the...