This paper suggests a novel approach for predicting aggregate stock returns at quarterly and annual frequencies. Weak return predictability is consistent with the view that a stationary component of stock prices is highly persistent. In such cases, expected returns are time-varying but also...

The decomposition of consumption beta into a component driven by assets' cash-flow news and one related to assets' discount-rate news reveals that macroeconomic risks embodied in cash flows largely account for the cross-sectional dynamics of average stock returns. Empirically, we find that...

Changes in international shipping freight rates can predict US and international stock market returns. In today’s global world where economies are linked, shipping freight rates carry information about economic activity and stock returns. Using US size and sector indices we find that shipping...

We argue that there is a connection between the interbank market for liquidity and the broader financial markets, which has its basis in demand for liquidity by banks. Tightness in the market for liquidity leads banks to engage in what we term “liquidity pull-back,” which involves selling...

Operating leverage (OL) and profitability are interrelated determinants of stock returns. We show that the outperformance of firms with high OL is driven by periods of unconstrained aggregate funding conditions. Firms with high OL are more risky in general, but when the Fed eases funding...

This paper empirically examines the effects of industrial and geographic innovations on firm-level profitability and stock returns due to spillovers. Using the data of U.S. patents and patent inventors, we propose empirical proxies for industrial and geographic spillovers and find a positive...

This paper documents a positive cross-sectional relation between returns and lagged idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) in the corporate bond market. The relation is stronger following periods of low funding liquidity due to a funding liquidity driven decrease in returns and its subsequent reversal....

Using a stylized two-period model we compare portfolio solutions from two local solution approaches - the approach of Judd and Guu (2001) and the approach of Devereux and Sutherland (2010, 2011) - with the true nonlinear portfolio solution.

This paper evidences the explanatory power of managers' uncertainty for cross-sectional stock returns. I introduce a novel measure of the degree of managers' uncertain beliefs about future states: manager uncertainty (MU), defined as the count of the word “uncertainty” over the sum of the...