Political science theories suggest that U.S. presidents' tenures in office share distinct phases, which have systematic characteristics, that span party ideologies. However, limited attention has been paid to the relation between the presidential life cycle and financial markets. We document...

We develop an index, termed the Government Legislative Index (GLX), that measures the ability of the US Government to execute legislation. In essence, the GLX measures the ability of the President and the ruling party to successfully convert proposed legislation into rules and regulations....

This study examines the stock market entry and exit decisions of U.S. households. We find that around 25% of households enter or exit from their non-retirement investment accounts biennially. Cross-sectional and time-series tests indicate that income risk affects equity ownership turnover. A...

We show that stock prices underreact when there is a political event, reflected in higher momentum returns. We conjecture that political news crowds out stock news cause investors to distract, trade more indexes and underreact to firm specific news. We analyze momentum returns following general...

We develop a new oil price uncertainty index (OPUX) based on newspaper and social networking coverage. Our index improves on the existing oil ETF volatility index (OVX) because financial markets are inefficient insofar as prices do not reflect all information (Shiller, 1981). Several pieces of...

This paper demonstrates that the Millennials exhibit a unique personality treats that has implications on their portfolio choice, and hence on the stock market. Specifically, Millennials display greater propensity to participate in the stock market, exhibit more confident, as they trade more...

This paper demonstrates the degree of under-diversification in equity portfolios can be explained by income risk (or other forms of risks faced by the household; e.g., unemployment risk). We present a model of investor diversification behavior in order to provide a framework by which to evaluate...

This paper accounts for the U.S. wealth inequality; we study ex ante identical households that face uninsured idiosyncratic shocks to their labor endowments and portfolio performances. The approach is motivated by numerous data sources indicating there is a great deal of inequality in households...

This paper estimates the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution (EIS) using household actual return. The approach is motivated by numerous data sources indicate that the median US stockholder has a portfolio contains three to four individual stocks, rather than a diverse bundle. Thus,...

Studies of household stock market participation report low participation rates. The explanations cited are that the fixed costs associated with participation and high risk aversion discourage households from buying stocks. However, the low participation rate findings are unchallenged. We argue...