Foreign portfolio flows may reflect deep changes in the functioning of an emerging market economy and its capital markets. Using a database of monthly net U.S. equity flows, we investigate the relation of these flows to the behavior of equity returns, the structural characteristics of the...

This paper analyzes the equity-portfolio recommendations made by investment newsletters. The dataset spans 17 years, is free of survivor and back-fill biases, and includes the complete recommendations for 153 different newsletters. Overall, there is no significant evidence of superior...

As a consequence of optimal investment choices, firms' assets and growth options change in predictable ways. Using a dynamic model, we show that this imparts predictability to changes in a firm's systematic risk, and its expected return. Simulations show that the model simultaneously reproduces:...

This paper investigates the effect of specific features of the U.S. capital gains tax on turn-of-the-year stock returns. It focuses on two tax changes. The first, enacted in 1969, reduced the fraction of long-term losses that were deductible from Adjusted Gross Income from 100 percent to 50...

A number of theories have been proposed to explain the medium-term momentum in stock returns identified by Jegadeesh and Titman (1993). We test one such theory--based on the gradual-information-diffusion model of Hong and Stein (1997)--and establish three key results. First, once one moves past...

Costs of equity for individual firms are estimated in a Bayesian framework using several factor-based pricing models. Substantial prior uncertainty about mispricing often produces an estimated cost of equity close to that obtained with mispricing precluded, even for a stock whose average return...

This paper reviews the behavior of financial asset prices in relation to consumption. The paper lists some important stylized facts that characterize US data, and relates them to recent developments in equilibrium asset pricing theory. Data from other countries are examined to see which features...

Will the stock market provide high returns in the future as it has in the past? The average US stock return in the postwar period has been about 8% above treasury bill rates. But that average is poorly measured: The standard confidence interval extends from 3% to 13%. Furthermore, expected...

This paper studies the impact of the portfolio constraint imposed by the consumption demand for housing (the 'housing constraint') on the household's optimal holdings of financial assets. Since the ratio of housing to net worth declines as the household accumulates wealth, the housing constraint...

Stock volatility has been unusually low since the 1987 stock market crash. The large increase in stock prices since 1987 means that many days during 1996 and 1997 experienced near record changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even though the volatility of stock returns has not been high by...