This paper analyzes the relation of stock volatility with real and nominal macroeconomic volatility, financial leverage, stock trading activity, default risk, and firm profitability using monthly data from 1857-1986. An important fact, previously noted by Officer [l973], is that stock return...

Stock volatility has been unusually low since the 1987 stock market crash. The large increase in stock prices since 1987 means that many days during 1996 and 1997 experienced near record changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even though the volatility of stock returns has not been high by...

This paper compares several statistical models for monthly stock return volatility. The focus is on U.S. data from 1834-19:5 because the post-1926 data have been analyzed in more detail by others. Also, the Great Depression had levels of stock volatility that are inconsistent with stationary...

We examine the strong cycles in the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) and in the average initial returns realized by investors who participated in the IPOs. At the aggregate level, initial returns are predictably related to past initial returns and also to future IPO volume from...

Both IPO volume and average initial returns are highly autocorrelated. Further, more companies tend to go public following periods of high initial returns. However, we find that the level of average initial returns at the time of filing contains no information about that company's eventual...