We explore the firm's required return on equity when it has a target debt ratio (TDR). We show that a firm's expected return is increasing in the product of the distance between its debt ratio (DR) from its TDR (E[TDR-DR]), its speed of adjustment, and the spread of its tax benefits of debt over...

The slope of the portfolio return and consumption growth cospectrum contains predictive information about future real economic activity, future recession probabilities, the risk aversion coefficient, as well as future expected returns. Commonly used economic variables do not subsume the...