Undiversifiable (or systematic risk) has long been an enemy of investors. Many countercyclical strategies have been developed to counter this. However, like all insurance types, these strategies are generally costly to implement, and over time can significantly reduce portfolio returns in long...

I use the global crisis of 1914 as a window onto the phenomenon of investor reaction to complex news — such as sudden political upheaval. Based on a novel database of all stocks traded on the NYSE during 1914, along with “real-time” news accounts from major newspapers, I show that NYSE...

This paper uses two economic shocks, a catastrophic earthquake, the Great East-Japan Earthquake, that hit Japan on March 11, 2011 and the pandemic in 2020, to determine if investors respond differently by the types of economic shocks. We analyze the factors affecting the abnormal returns during...

Motivated by individuals' emotional response to risk at different time horizons, we model an 'anxious' agent - one who is more risk averse with respect to imminent risks than distant risks. Such preferences describe well-documented features of 1) individual behavior, 2) equilibrium prices, and...

I solve the life-cycle portfolio allocation problem of a disappointment averse (DA) agent with labor income risk. DA preferences overweight disappointing outcomes and are consistent with behavior highlighted by the Allais paradox. I show that unlike constant relative risk aversion (CRRA)...

These days it's become convention (reinforced by the media's treatment of wealth) to assess our net worth by tallying up the market value of our financial assets, even though it's more natural and useful to think of our wealth as a stream of dollars over time given the nature of our income and...

Managed volatility strategies adjust market exposure in inverse relation to a risk estimate, to stabilize realized portfolio volatility through time. Our paper examines strategy performance from an investment practitioner perspective. Using long-term data from the Standard & Poor's 500, we show...

Higher default probabilities are associated with lower future stock returns. The anomaly cannot be explained by strategic shareholder actions, traditional risk factors, characteristics, or mispricing, but, instead, is consistent with a risk-shifting hypothesis. Consistent with the risk-shifting...

We analyze the influence of individuals' degree of extraversion and neuroticism on the determinants of their risk-taking behavior in investment decisions. As there are no studies that investigate the influence of personality traits on risk attitude, risk perception, and return expectations in...

How do people cope with tail risk? In a lab experiment that removed informational and incentive confounds, subjects overwhelmingly behaved like Bayesian learners. The results of simulations further revealed that if one is to survive under tail risk, one needs to follow the Bayesian approach, as...