Stocks with recent past high idiosyncratic volatility have low future average returns around the world. Across 23 developed markets, the difference in average returns between the extreme quintile portfolios sorted on idiosyncratic volatility is -1:31% per month, after controlling for world...

During the recent financial crisis, capital flow to hedge funds plunged, and competition among hedge fund managers intensified. This leads to a transfer of bargaining power from hedge fund managers to investors when negotiating fund managers' compensation contracts. We use a signaling game...

This paper examines the specification errors of several asset pricing models using the methodology of Hansen and Jagannathan (1997) and a common data set. The models are the CAPM, the Consumption CAPM, the Jagannathan and Wang (1996) conditional CAPM, the Campbell (1996) dynamic asset pricing...

We show that 71% of the earnings announcement premium takes place before, rather than after, earning releases. We attribute this pattern to uncertainty resolution before earnings announcement, and provide compelling evidence that high uncertainty stocks experience more uncertainty resolution and...

The shape of the volatility smirk has significant cross-sectional predictive power for future equity returns. Stocks exhibiting the steepest smirks in their traded options underperform stocks with the least pronounced volatility smirks in their options by around 10.9% per year on a risk-adjusted...

We develop a systematic approach for evaluating asset pricing models based on the second Hansen-Jagannathan distance (HJD), which requires a good asset pricing model to not only have small pricing errors but also be arbitrage free. Our approach includes a specification test and a sequence of...

Using a large sample of hedge fund manager characteristics, we provide one of the first comprehensive studies on the impact of manager characteristics, such as education and career concern, on hedge fund performances. We document differential ability among hedge fund managers in generating...

Using a large sample of hedge fund manager characteristics, we provide one of the first comprehensive studies on the impact of manager characteristics, such as education and career concern, on hedge fund performances. We document differential ability among hedge fund managers in generating...

The Northeast Asian region includes the major players China, Japan, and Korea, with productive linkages to resource-rich Russia and to the United States and is one of the most dynamic economic regions in the world. In contrast to the region's robust economic growth, regional security has long...

Using NYSE short-sale order data, we investigate whether short-sellers' informational advantage is related to firm earnings and analyst-related events. With a novel decomposition method, we find that while these fundamental event days constitute only 12% of sample days, they account for over 24%...