This paper studies the cross-sectional risk-return trade-off in the stock market. A fundamental principle in finance is the positive relation between risk and expected return, whereas recent empirical evidence suggests the opposite. Using several intuitive risk measures, we show that the...

I study time-variation in variance discount rates, defined as the expected returns for investing in variance risk. I show that variance discount rates drive a significant fraction of the variation in prices of S&P 500 variance swaps. This analysis offers important insights into preferences of...

Product differentiation is well established as being the key source of the cereal industry's high price-cost margins. However, there is little consensus as to whether pricing collusion is also a source of profitability, and indeed, whether price even serves as a strategic variable in this...