We decompose the cross-sectional variance of firms' book-to-market ratios using both a long U.S. panel and a shorter international panel. In contrast to typical aggregate time-series results, transitory cross-sectional variation in expected 15-year stock returns causes only a relatively small...

If investors are myopic mean-variance optimizers, a stock's expected return is linearly related to its beta in the cross section. The slope of the relation is the cross-sectional price of risk, which should equal the expected equity premium. We use this simple observation to forecast the...

The cash flows of growth stocks are particularly sensitive to temporary movements in aggregate stock prices, driven by shocks to market discount rates, while the cash flows of value stocks are particularly sensitive to permanent movements, driven by shocks to aggregate cash flows. Thus, the high...

This paper explains the size and value quot;anomaliesquot; in stock returns using an economically motivated two-beta model. We break the CAPMbeta of a stock with the market portfolio into two components, one reflecting news about the market's future cash flows and one reflecting news about the...

I use a simple vector autoregressive (VAR) model to decompose a typical firm's stock return into two components: changes in cash-flow expectations (i.e., cash-flow news) and changes in discount rates (i.e., expected-return news). The VAR model yields three main results. First, firm-level stock...

Most previous research evaluates market efficiency and asset pricing models using average abnormal trading profits on dynamic trading strategies. We measure the ability of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the efficient-market hypothesis to explain the level of stock prices. First, we...

In order to connect the stock market valuation level to medium-term cash-flow fundamentals, I develop a dynamic model that links the book-to-market ratio to subsequent profitability, interest rates, and excess stock returns. My approach avoids modeling the potentially unstable dividend process....

The cash flows of growth stocks are particularly sensitive to temporary movements in aggregate stock prices (driven by movements in the equity risk premium), while the cash flows of value stocks are particularly sensitive to permanent movements in aggregate stock prices (driven by market-wide...

Stock returns are correlated with contemporaneous earnings growth, dividend growth, future real activity, and other cash-flow proxies. The correlation between cash-flow proxies and stock returns may arise from association of cash-flow proxies with one-period expected returns, cash-flow news,...

Modigliani and Cohn [1979] hypothesize that the stock market suffers from money illusion, discounting real cash flows at nominal discount rates. While previous research has focused on the pricing of the aggregate stock market relative to Treasury bills, the money-illusion hypothesis also has...