The Baker and Wurgler (2006) sentiment index purports to measure irrational investor sentiment, while the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index is designed to largely reflect fundamentals. Removing this fundamental component from the Baker and Wurgler index creates an index of investor...

The study introduces empirical evidence that there are statistically significant relationships between intensity of upcoming aggregate merger activity and the present values of the factors HML and SMB in the Fama-French three-factor model of assets pricing

This paper examines the cross-sectional properties of stock return forecasts based on Fama-MacBeth regressions using all firms contained in the STOXX Europe 600 index during the September 1999-December 2018 period. Our estimation approach is strictly out-of-sample, mimicking an investor who...

The article deals with a class of stochastic processes, the Multifractional Processes with Random Exponent (MPRE), recently introduced to gain flexibility in modeling many complex phenomena. We claim that MPRE can capture in a very parsimonious way most of the well known financial stylized...

Even in large equity markets, the dividend-price ratio is significantly related with the growth of future dividends. In order to uncover this relationship, we use monthly dividends and a mixed data sampling technique which allows us to cope with within-year seasonality. We reduce the effect of...

This study examines if the change in aggregate Tobin's q ratio (∆TBQ) can dynamically forecast return on the S&P 500 (SP). The VAR results from analyzing quarterly data from 1951Q4 to 2012Q4 show that the response of SP to ∆TBQ shock becomes significantly positive immediately. The...

After showing that the distribution of the S&P 500's distortion, i.e. the log difference between its real stock market index and its real fundamental value, is bimodal, we demonstrate that agentbased financial market models may explain this puzzling observation. Within these models, speculators...

Tests of excessive volatility along the lines of Shiller (1981) and Leroy and Porter (1981) count among the most convincing pieces of evidence against the validity of the time-honored efficient market hypothesis. Recently, using Shiller s distinction between ex-ante rational (fundamental) price...

We show that log-dividends (d) and log-prices (p) are cointegrated, but, instead of de facto assuming the stationarity of the classical log dividend–price ratio, we allow the data to reveal the cointegration vector between d and p. We define the modified dividend–price ratio (mdp), as the...

We study firm-level characteristics that a manager would employ as signalling tools in order to time the market (i.e. repurchases and issues). Following the market timing framework, we develop a two-factor asset pricing model comprising a “market” and a “mispricing” factor, which is able...