A simple valuation model that allows for time variation in investment opportunities is developed and estimated. The model assumes that the investment opportunity set is completely described by two state variables, the real interest rate and the maximum Sharpe ratio, which follow correlated...

We explain the puzzling empirical evidence on the investory accounting choice through a management signaling argument. We assert that firms with lower nominal production costs than other firms have relatively less to gain from the tax advantages assocaited with LIFO adoption. For these firms,...

We estimate the parameters of pricing kernels that depend on both aggregate wealth and state variables that describe the investment opportunity set, using FTSE 100 and S&P 500 index option returns as the returns to be priced. The coefficients of the state variables are highly significant and...

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Option theory is used here to determine the variables that should explain the price of bank loans to foreign governments. As usual, the key explanatory variable is the variance of the underlying state variable (in casu, government income). It is also shown that these bank loans can often be...

We examine the welfare effects of costly information acquistion in a version of the Grossman-Stiglitz (1980) exchange economy in which all traders are fully rational. We find, as emphasized by Hirschleifer, that information gathering leads the suboptimal risk sharing. Furthermore, information...

We study a rational expectation model of bubbles and crashes. The model has two components: (1) our key assumption is that a crash may be caused by local self-reinforcing imitation between noise traders. If the tendency for noise traders to imitate their nearest neighbors increases up to a...

In their article Stock Issues and Investment Policy When Firms Have Information That Investors Do not Have, Myers and Majluf(1981) show that there exist situations where positive net present value projects may be passed up if they have to be financed externally. It is shown here that if projects...

We re-examine the Mehra and Prescott (1985) model. Allowing the time preference factor to be greater than one resolves the "equity premium puzzle." We show that this solution is consistent with finite expected utility and a positive risk-free rate of interest. For somewhat higher values of...