This paper analyzes the ability of both economic variables and moving-average rules to forecast the monthly U.S. equity premium using out-of-sample tests for 1960–2008. Both approaches provide statistically and economically significant out-of-sample forecasting gains, which are concentrated in U.S. business-cycle recessions. Nevertheless, economic variables and moving-average rules capture diff...

This paper evaluates the specification errors of several empirical asset pricing models that have been developed as potential improvements on the CAPM. We use the methodology of Hansen and Jagannathan (J. Finance 51 (1997) 3), and the test assets are the 25 Fama-French (J. Financial Econom. 52 (1997) 557) equity portfolios sorted on size and book-to-market ratio, and the Treasury bill. We allow...

We study optimal consumption and portfolio choice in a framework where investors adjust their labor supply through an irreversible choice of their retirement time. We show that investing for early retirement tends to increase savings and reduce an agent’s effective relative risk aversion, thus increasing her stock market exposure. Contrary to common intuition, an investor might find it optimal ...

This paper establishes a strong link between the dispersion in beliefs among active mutual funds, as revealed through their active holdings (i.e., deviations from benchmarks), and future stock returns. We find that after standard risk adjustments, stocks in the top decile portfolio with large increases in dispersion outperform those in the bottom decile by more than 1% per month. This effect of...

Using a new data set on investor sentiment, we show that institutional and individual sentiment seem to proxy for smart money and noise trader risk, respectively. First, using bias-adjusted long-horizon regressions, we show that institutional sentiment forecasts stock market returns at intermediate horizons correctly, whereas individuals consistently get the direction wrong. Second, even the si...

This paper investigates how market structure a¤ects e¢ ciency and several dimensions of liquidity in an asset market. To this end, we generalize the searchtheoretic model of …nancial intermediation of Darrell Du¢ e et al. (2005) to allow for entry of dealers and unrestricted asset holdings. Keywords: bid-ask spread, execution delay, liquidity, search, trade volume JEL Classi…cation: G11, G12, G...

The present paper investigates the portfolio allocation decisions of an investor with infinite horizon when available financial assets differ in their degrees of liquidity. A model with risk neutral agents allows us to endogenously determine the liquidity premium. With risk averse agents, we develop a nontrivial portfolio allocation problem, which enables us to calculate the demand for an illiq...

Uncertainty about the future rises in recessions. But is uncertainty a source of business cycle fluctuations or an endogenous response to them, and does the type of uncertainty matter? Answer: sharply higher uncertainty about real economic activity in recessions is fully an endogenous response to other shocks that cause business cycle fluctuations, while uncertainty about financial markets is a...

The objective of this paper is to review the transmission mechanisms uniting equity market development and economic growth in developing countries. We find that the theoretical impact of equity markets is ambiguous. At the domestic level, the allocation function of equity markets appears conditioned by the extent of informational efficiency. Turning to international linkages, theoretical models...

We present an equilibrium model of a moral-hazard economy with one firm and financial markets, where a stock and bonds are traded. We show that it is optimal for the principal to forbid the agent to trade the stock; that the second-best interest rate is lower than the first-best interest rate; and that the second-best equity premium can be higher or lower than the first best equity premium. We ...