The finance literature looks at a number of factors to explain risk premia in corporate debt, such as liquidity effects, jump-to-default risk, and contagion risk. Stochastic re-covery rates as a source of systematic risk have not received much attention so far, most likely due to the...

This article implements the minimum variance frontier for the stochastic discount factor, according to both Hansen and Jagannathan (1991) and Cochrane and Hansen (1992), for the Brazilian stock market. Two approaches are considered in terms of equity returns and equity premium, respectively, the...

We use a standard consumption-based asset pricing model incorporating conditioning information to explain the risk-return profile of currency carry trade portfolios. We use a scaled stochastic discount factor instead of scaled or managed portfolio returns as in previous work. Our conditioning...

We use a standard consumption-based asset pricing model incorporating conditioning information to explain the risk-return profile of currency carry trade portfolios. We use a scaled stochastic discount factor instead of scaled or managed portfolio returns as in previous work. Our conditioning...

The Black-Litterman model has gained popularity in applications in the area of quantitative equity portfolio management. Unfortunately, many recent applications of the Black-Litterman to novel aspects of quantitative portfolio management have neglected the rigor of the original Black-Litterman...

When the pricing kernel is U-shaped, then expected returns of claims with payout on the upside are negative for strikes beyond a threshold, determined by the slope of the U-shaped kernel in its increasing region, and have negative partial derivative with respect to strike in the increasing...

We document a robust pattern of beta declining over the age of a firm. We find that changes in systematic risk via firm characteristics and life-cycle stages are insufficient to explain this pattern. Moreover, standard proxies for the quantity and quality of information also explain this pattern...

Does the ability to pledge an asset as collateral, after purchase, affect its price? This paper identifies the impact of collateral service flows on house prices, exploiting a plausibly exogenous constitutional amendment in Texas which legalized home equity loans in 1998. The law change...

A growing literature analyzes the cross-section of single stock option returns, virtually always under the (implicit or explicit) assumption of a monotonically decreasing pricing kernel. Using option returns, we non-parametrically provide significant and robust evidence that the pricing kernel...

We argue that the CAPM may be a reasonable model for estimating the cost of capital for projects in spite of increasing empirical evidence in the literature against the CAPM based on stock returns. As McDonald and Siegel (1985) and Berk, Green and Naik (1999) point out, stocks are backed by...