We build a model of the law of small numbers (LSN)--the incorrect belief that even small samples represent the properties of the underlying population--to study its implications for trading behavior and asset prices. In our model, a belief in the LSN induces investors to expect short-term price...

We study how investors respond to inflation combining a customized survey experiment with trading data at a time of historically high inflation. Investors' beliefs about the stock return-inflation relation are very heterogeneous in the cross section and on average too optimistic. Moreover, many...

We study how investors respond to inflation combining a customized survey experiment with trading data at a time of historically high inflation. Investors' beliefs about the stock return-inflation relation are very heterogeneous in the cross section and on average too optimistic. Moreover, many...

We develop a tractable model of costly stock short-selling and lending market within a familiar dynamic asset pricing framework. The model addresses the vast empirical literature in this market and generates implications that support many of the empirical regularities. In the model, investors'...

We document considerable cross-sectional variation in survey expectations about aggregate stock market returns. While most investors are extrapolators who expect higher returns after a good performance, some are contrarians. More notably, compared to extrapolators, contrarians have less...

This paper tests the idea that financial intermediaries who act as arbitrageurs in the asset market help determine the equilibrium risk of financial assets. They do this by turning “alphas” into “betas”; assets with large abnormal returns attract more arbitrage and covary correspondingly...

Since firms time the stock market through equity net issuance, the direction of net issuance reveals the firm's net present value calculation and an asset pricing model of risk most likely to be used in the calculation. We take this insight to develop a test that infers an asset pricing model...

Average idiosyncratic volatility and firm idiosyncratic volatility increase with the number of listed firms. Average industry idiosyncratic volatility increases with the number of listed firms in the industry. We ex-plain the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and the number of listed...

We construct the first consistent market rent and home sales price series for American cities across the 20th century using millions of newspaper real estate listings. Our findings revise several stylized facts about U.S. housing markets. Real market rents did not fall during the 20th century...

We propose the bear beta, i.e. the sensitivity of hedge funds to a bear spread portfolio orthogonalized to the market, as a novel way of classifying funds as insurance buyers or sellers. We find that low bear beta funds (insurance sellers) outperform high bear beta funds (insurance buyers) by...