I establish that inflation risk is priced in the cross section of stock returns: Stocks that have low returns during inflationary times command a risk premium. I estimate a market price of inflation risk that is comparable in magnitude to the price of risk for the aggregate market. Inflation is...

Portfolio Theory has during many decades been considered as the holy grail of investment despite the fact that very few empirical studies in the public domain have shown that portfolio theory outperforms a random equal weighted portfolio. We will in this paper empirically investigate how...

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...

We estimate the equity risk premium (ERP) by combining information from twenty models. The ERP in 2012 and 2013 reached heightened levels - of around 12 percent - not seen since the 1970s. We conclude that the high ERP was caused by unusually low Treasury yields.

This paper provides a quantitative perspective on Gene Fama's influence on the scholarly community. He has more than 140,000 Google cites while the median number of citations for the Fellows of the American Finance Association is 32,792. Gene Fama has published highly-cited papers in six...

We give an explicit algorithm and source code for combining alpha streams via bounded regression. In practical applications, typically, there is insufficient history to compute a sample covariance matrix (SCM) for a large number of alphas. To compute alpha allocation weights, one then resorts to...

Understanding the factors that drive the stock market is more than an academic exercise. With a framework to understanding what that drives the overall market, business leaders are positioned to drive value their own businesses. While driving increases in shareholder value is one of the most...

This study extends the generalized Ho–Lee model to the credit derivative swap (CDS) curve movements that ensures the hazard rate movement is arbitrage-free for any given CDS curve. This study shows that the generalized Ho–Lee model is not limited to pricing the interest contingent claims....

In this paper, we consider the measurement and pricing of distress risk.We present a model of corporate failure in which accounting and market-based measures forecast the likelihood of future financial distress. Our best model is more accurate than leading alternative measures of corporate...

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) has far-reaching practical implications for both investors and corporate managers. The model implies that the market portfolio is mean variance efficient, and thus advocates passive investment. It also provides the most widely used measure of risk, beta,...