We examine the information content of option and equity volumes when trade direction is unobserved. In a multimarket asymmetric information model, equity short-sale costs result in a negative relation between relative option volume and future firm value. In our empirical tests, firms in the...

Using newly-mandated disclosures, we show some fund managers retain a fraction of securities lending income by employing in-house lending agents. In a model with heterogeneous investors, we find this retention leads funds to "reach for lending fees" by overweighting high-fee stocks that...

We measure the impact of reputation for proxy fighting on investor activism by estimating a dynamic model in which activists engage a sequence of target firms. Our estimation produces an evolving reputation measure for each activist and quantifies its impact on campaign frequency and outcomes....

I assess time-series return predictability using a weighted least squares estimator that is around 25% more efficient than ordinary least squares (OLS) because it incorporates time-varying volatility into its point estimates. Traditional predictors, such as the dividend yield, perform better in-...

The shape of the VIX term structure conveys information about the price of variance risk rather than expected changes in the VIX, a rejection of the expectations hypothesis. A single principal component, Slope, summarizes nearly all this information, predicting the excess returns of S&P 500...

Kandel and Stambaugh (1996) demonstrate that forecasting variables with weak statistical support in predictive return regressions can exert considerable economic influence on portfolio decisions. Using a Bayesian vector autoregression framework with stochastic volatility in market returns and...