Volatility is an important component of asset pricing; an increase in volatility on markets can trigger changes in the risk distribution of financial assets. In conventional financial theory, investors are considered to be rational and any changes in relevant risk are assumed to be a result of...

We develop a four-factor model intended to capture size, value, and credit rating transition patterns in excess returns for a panel of predominantly mid- and large-cap entities. Using credit transition matrices and rating histories from 48 US issuers, we provide evidence to support a...

Using a news-based gauge of geopolitical risk, we study its role for asset pricing in global emerging markets. We find that changes in risk positively predict future stock returns. The countries with the highest increase in geopolitical uncertainty outperform their counterparts with the lowest...

Research shows that stocks with fluent names trade at higher prices. However, it is not clear whether fluency simply appeals to naive investors, or actually identifies better firms. In this paper, we disentangle these two explanations. Consistent with our theoretical model, we find that the...

I show that endogenous investor inattention – investors allocating cognitive resources based on incentives – can explain substantial price underreaction to public information in corporate bond and stock markets. The key evidence is that prices under- react less to more payoff-relevant risks....

Consensus analyst target prices are widely available online at no cost to investors. In this paper we consider whether these consensus target prices are informative for predicting future returns. We find that when considered in isolation, consensus target prices are not generally informative...

We document a nominal stock price effect that is (like momentum) associated with (national) culture. Using the full spectrum of cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede et al. and the cross-section of stock returns of 41 countries, we not only show a robust predictive and explanatory power of...

This paper shows that market breadth, i.e. the difference between the average number of rising stocks and the average number of falling stocks within a portfolio, is a robust predictor of future stock returns on market and industry portfolios for 64 countries for the period between 1973 and...

We distill tone from a huge assortment of NASDAQ articles to examine the predictive power of media-expressed tone in single-stock option markets and equity markets. We find that (1) option markets are impacted by media tone; (2) option variables predict stock returns along with tone; (3) option...

This paper provides evidence that the market does not efficiently incorporate expected returns implied by analyst price targets into prices. I use a novel decomposition to extract information and bias components from these analyst-expected returns and develop an asset pricing framework that...