The behavior of institutional investors in money market securities, as exemplified by changes in assets allocated to money market mutual funds, is examined using a unique transaction data set and partial adjustment framework in order to validate fund managers and traders expectations. Individual transaction data is aggregated and separated into a low and high frequency component. The low freque...

Donald Trump’s election was a significant surprise. The reaction of company stock prices to the election reflects shifts in investor expectations about economic growth, taxes, and trade policy. High-beta stocks outperformed, presumably due to strengthened growth expectations. Expectations of significant corporate tax cuts boosted high-tax firms, but hurt firms with significant net operating los...

Donald Trump’s election was a significant surprise. The reaction of company stock prices to the election reflects shifts in investor expectations about economic growth, taxes, and trade policy. High-beta stocks outperformed, presumably due to strengthened growth expectations. Expectations of significant corporate tax cuts boosted high-tax firms, but hurt firms with significant net operating los...

Investors and policymakers have long hoped that Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) would provide an accurate measure of long-term market inflation expectations. To make informed decisions and to ensure that inflation does not erode the purchasing power of their assets, investors need to assess the rate of inflation expected by other market participants. Having an accurate measure of...

This paper examines if markets populated by short-horizon investors tend to have the prices come unhooked from their fundamental values or cash flows. For prices to be near the fundamental value in a market populated with short-horizon investors, the investors must induct backward from future cash flows to the present values. We argue that investors’ ability to backward induct depends criticall...

We show how low-frequency boom and bust cycles in asset prices can emerge from Bayesian learning by investors. Investors rationally maximize infinite horizon utility but hold subjective priors about the asset return process that we allow to differ infinitesimally from the rational expectations prior. Bayesian updating of return beliefs then gives rise to self-reinforcing return optimism that re...

Consider the Rational Expectations price history of an Arrow-Debreu security that matures in the money: p1; p2; :::; pT . Past information can be used to predict the return (pt+1 pt)=pt. Now consider a simple alternative performance measure: (pt+1 pt)=pt+1. It di ers from the return only in that the future price is used as basis. This variable cannot be forecasted from past information. The res...

We construct equilibria of continuous-time, overlapping generations economies whereby interest rates and asset prices affect the distribution of wealth and consumption between existing and arriving cohorts of investors. Such economies are prone to self-fulfilling expectations and a multitude of equilibria; anticipations of future discount rates impact asset prices and the wealth distribution, c...