In this paper we study the implications of general-purpose technological growth for asset prices. The model features two types of shocks: "small", frequent, and disembodied shocks to productivity and "large" technological innovations, which are embodied into new vintages of the capital stock....

We measure ex-ante expectation errors by identifying sporadic versus persistent total asset growth ex-ante. Corporate profitability of high (low) asset-growth firms remains inferior (superior) after temporary asset expansion (contraction), hence ex-ante expectation errors are high. Corporate...

Studies have shown that firm asset growth predicts cross-sectional stock returns. Firms that shrink their assets earn superior returns while firms that substantially expand their assets incur poor returns in the following years. I show that the negative asset growth often implies poor operating...

Components of balance sheet asset growth driven by earnings management contributed to the asset growth anomaly in the past. These components of balance sheet asset growth are no longer related to returns and this has contributed to the disappearance of the asset growth anomaly. I provide...

We find that the low average returns to firms with high asset growth are consistent with two key implications of models of diagnostic investor expectations (e.g., Bordalo, Gennaioli, La Porta, and Shleifer, 2019) that formalize the representativeness heuristic of Kahneman and Tversky (1972)....