I provide evidence that fund managers who overweight firms with the most differentiated products ('monopolies') exhibit a superior risk-adjusted performance. This is consistent with information advantages due to a better understanding of qualitative information on a firm's competitive...

From 1963 through 2015, idiosyncratic risk (IR) is high when market risk (MR) is high. We show that the positive relation between IR and MR is highly stable through time and is robust across exchanges, firm size, liquidity, and market-to-book groupings. Though stock liquidity affects the...

In March 2013, Lululemon Athletica removed its inventory of women's black yoga pants from its stores because recent shipments of the product were “too sheer.” For a company reliant on a reputation for quality, the news was devastating. Worse, the recall set off a series of PR related...

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the impact of transaction costs in portfolio optimization in Peru. The study aims to compare the transaction costs structure applied in Peru with respect to the ones applied in the USA, and over a few dimensions. Design/methodology/approach The paper opted for...

I estimate a life-cycle model of portfolio choices that incorporates the relationship between market returns and the skewness of idiosyncratic income shocks. The cyclicality of skewness can explain (i) low stock market participation among young households, (ii) why the equity share of...

We uncover a large and significant low-minus-high rank effect for commodities across two centuries. There is nothing anomalous about this anomaly, nor is it clear how it can be arbitraged away. Using nonparametric econometric methods, we demonstrate that such a rank effect is a necessary...

This paper revisits the puzzle of low returns on Swiss Franc assets using a new data set of portfolio holdings of residents and non residents at Swiss banks. The main findings are as follows. First, we find that the return anomaly is present only for fixed income assets and not for equity....

In this paper we analyze transitions in the stock markets of the US, the UK, and Germany. For all this markets we find that while the markets were focused on stocks from the IT and technology sector around the year 2000, this focus has vanished and the markets have mostly moved towards a focus...

The high cost of capital for firms conducting medical research and development (R&D) has been partly attributed to the government risk facing investors in medical innovation. This risk slows down medical innovation because investors must be compensated for it. We propose new and simple financial...

Modern open economy macro models assume the continuous adjustment of international portfolio allocation. We introduce gradual portfolio adjustment into a global equity market model. Our approach differs from related literature in two key dimensions. First, the time interval between portfolio...