This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

Much of the trading activity in Equity markets is directed to brokerage houses. In exchange they provide so-called quot;soft dollarsquot; which basically are amounts spent in quot;researchquot; for identifying profitable trading opportunities. Soft dollars represent about USD 1 out of every USD...

Testing procedures for predictive regressions with lagged autoregressive variables imply a suboptimal inference in presence of small violations of ideal assumptions. We propose a novel testing framework resistant to such violations, which is consistent with nearly integrated regressors and...

We find that weak identification can lead to econometric problems with Fama-MacBeth regressions, including serious size distortions and biased point estimates. Two sources of weak identification are particularly important and have been little studied in the finance literature – small betas and...

Many securities markets are organized as double auctions where each incoming limit order --- i.e., an order to buy or sell at a specific price --- is stored in a data structure called the limit order book. A trade happens whenever a market order arrives --- i.e., an order to buy or sell at the...

This paper studies the empirically relevant problem of estimation and inference in diffusion index forecasting models with structural instability. Factor model and factor augmented regression both experience a structural change with different unknown break dates. In the factor model, we estimate...

The introduction by regulators of mandatory margining for bilateral OTCs is going to have a major impact on the derivatives market, particularly in light of the additional funding costs and liquidity requirements that large financial institutions will face. Fabrizio Anfuso, Daniel Aziz, Paul...

We employ a Mixed-Frequency VAR to study the effect of four valuation ratios (the price-dividend ratio, the price-earnings ratio, the Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings Ratio and the Total Return Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings Ratio) on the US stock market. We quantify the interaction...