I examine a factor pricing model for stock returns. The factors are returns on physical investment, inferred from investment data via a production function. I examine the model's ability to explain variation in expected returns across asset and over time. The model is not rejected. It performs...

If returns are not predictable, dividend growth must be predictable, to generate the observed variation in divided yields. I find that the absence of dividend growth predictability gives stronger evidence than does the presence of return predictability. Long-horizon return forecasts give the...

We construct an affine model that incorporates bond risk premia. By understanding risk premia, we are able to use a lot of information from well-measured risk-neutral dynamics to characterize real expectations. We use the model to decompose the yield curve into expected interest rate and risk...

Conventional models of production under uncertainty specify that output is produced in fixed proportions across states of nature. I investigate a representation of technology that allows firms to transform output from one state to another. I allow the firm to choose the distribution of its...

Wealth inequality has become a heated political issue. Politicians claim that wealth concentration is rising and that people at the top are gaining at other people's expense. In this study, I examine problems with the measurement of wealth and discuss whether wealth inequality is an issue that...

I construct a simple model with sticky prices and interest rate targets, closed by fiscal theory of the price level with long-term debt and fiscal and monetary policy rules. Fiscal surpluses rise followingperiods of deficit, to repay accumulated debt, but surpluses do not respond to arbitrary...

Conventional models of production under uncertainty specify that output is produced in fixed proportions across states of nature. I investigate a representation of technology that allows firms to transform output from one state to another. I allow the firm to choose the distribution of its...

The market value of government debt equals the present discounted value of primary surpluses. Applying present value decompositions from asset pricing to this valuation equation, I find that half of the variation in the market value of debt to GDP ratio corresponds to varying forecasts of future...

Unexpected inflation devalues nominal government bonds. It must therefore correspond to a decline in expected future surpluses, or a rise in their discount rates, so that the real value of debt equals the present value of surpluses. I measure each component via a vector autoregression, in...

The poor performance of consumption-based asset pricing models relative to traditional portfolio-based asset pricing models is one of the great disappointments of the empirical asset pricing literature. We show that the external habit-formation model economy of Campbell and Cochrane (1999) can...