The size effect, whereby small firms outperform large firms, is not only a pervasive phenomenon in financial markets but also an important pricing factor in the Fama and French models (1993; 2018). However, several studies document that the size effect in recent decades has disappeared in the US and...

Fear of risk provides a rationale for protracted economic downturns. We develop a real business cycle model where investors with decreasing relative risk aversion choose between a risky and a safe technology that exhibit decreasing returns. Because of a feedback effect from the interest rate to...