A new factor model consisting of the market factor, an investment factor, and a return-on-equity factor is a good start to understanding the cross-section of expected stock returns. Firms will invest a lot when their profitability is high and the cost of capital is low. As such, controlling for...

We study the interactions between the stock market and the labor market. When aggregate risk premiums are time-varying, predictive variables for market excess returns should forecast long-horizon growth in the marginal benefit of hiring and thereby long-horizon aggregate employment growth....

Fama and French (2002) estimate the equity premium using dividend growth rates to measure expected rates of capital gain. We use a similar method to study the value premium. From 1941 to 2005, the expected HML return is on average 6.0% per annum, consisting of an expected dividend-growth...

This paper revisits the time-series relation between the conditional risk premium and variance of the equity market portfolio. The main innovation is that we construct a measure of the ex ante equity market risk premium using corporate bond yield spread data. This measure is forward-looking and...

We use corporate bond yield spreads to gauge investors' return expectations. We then replace standard ex-post, averaged measures of return with our ex-ante return measures in asset pricing assets. We find that the market beta plays a significant role in the cross-section of returns when...

Building on neoclassical reasoning, we propose a new multi-factor model that consists of the market factor and factor mimicking portfolios based on investment and productivity. The neo- classical three-factor model outperforms traditional factor models in explaining the average returns across...

Fama and French (2002) estimate the equity premium using dividend growth rates to measure the expected rate of capital gain. We use similar methods to study the value premium. From 1941 to 2002, the expected HML return is on average 5.1% per annum, consisting of an expected-dividend-growth...

We construct firm-specific measures of expected equity returns using corporate bond yields, and replace standard ex-post average returns with our expected-return measures in asset pricing tests. We find that the market beta is significantly priced in the cross-section of expected returns. The...

Fama and French (2002) estimate the equity premium using dividend growth rates to measure expected rates of capital gain. We apply their method to study the value premium. From 1945 to 2005, the expected value premium is on average 6.1% per annum, consisting of an expected dividend-growth...

Within the standard search and matching model, time-to-build implies that high aggregate risk premiums should forecast low employment growth in the short run but high employment growth in the long run. If there is also time-to-plan, high risk premiums should also forecast low net hiring rates in...