We study the determinants of corporate investment growth in the U.S. We use accounting identities to develop a system in which unexpected changes in investment growth are decomposed into surprises to current earnings growth, surprises to current stock returns, revisions of expectations about...

We study the determinants of aggregate corporate investment in the U.S. We use accounting identities to develop a system in which (i) news about future cash flows and news about future discount rates are directly estimated, thus mitigating measurement problems with Tobin's q, the variable that...

A deep-ingrained doctrine in asset pricing says that if an empirical characteristic-return relation is consistent with investor “rationality,” the relation must be “explained” by a risk (factor) model. The investment approach questions the doctrine. Factors formed on characteristics are...

We derive and test q-theory implications for cross-sectional stock returns. Under constant returns to scale, stock returns equal levered investment returns, which are tied directly to firm characteristics. When we use GMM to match average levered investment returns to average observed stock...