We construct mean-variance optimized currency portfolios and analyze the time- series variation of the conditional Sharpe ratio. Returns, volatility and skewness are predictable. Market timing – i.e., trading more (less) aggressively when the conditional risk-return trade-off is more (less)...

Output fluctuations in nontraded sectors are a primary country-specific risk factor because nontraded outputs are consumed domestically. While nontraded sector growth risks are mostly non-diversifiable, they can be partially mitigated by international trades in other sectors. The mitigation...

By assuming that stochastic discount factor (SDF) M be a proper but unspecified function of state variables X, we show that this function M(X) must solve a simple second-order linear differential equation specified by state variables' risk-neutral dynamics. Therefore, this assumption determines...

We analyze whether the timing of public information releases affects risk-sharing and pricing in a pure exchange economy. Information releases do not matter if agents have time additive preferences, homogeneous beliefs and access to complete markets. In the case of heterogeneity in agents'...

Although the threat of rare economic disasters can have large effect on asset prices, difficulty in inference regarding both their likelihood and severity provides the potential for disagreements among investors. Such disagreements lead investors to insure each other against the types of...

A powerful isomorphism allows differences in time preference and expectations to be swept away in the analysis, yielding an equivalent economy whose agents differ merely in risk aversion. These results hold great potential to simplify the analysis of heterogeneous-agent economies, as we...