This paper constructs a new data set of repeated sales of artworks and estimates an annual index of art prices for the period 1875-2000. Contrary to earlier studies, we find art outperforms fixed income securities as an investment, though it significantly under-performs stocks in the US. Art is...

TV viewership data available at the individual set-top box level has enabled new methods for estimating the demographics of shows' audiences, but it is impossible to tell with certainty which household members are watching TV in multi-person households. We address this problem through four main...

The degree of competition that a rm faces affects its ability to commit to goodbehavior. However, the relationship need not be monotonic since competition affectsthe pro ts when committed to good behavior (such as efficient high quality) and badbehavior as well as the short-term profits from...

Hedge fund managers contribute substantial personal capital, or "skin in the game," into their funds. While these allocations may better align incentives, managers may also strategically allocate their private capital in ways that negatively affect investors. We find that funds with more inside...

We document a significant inverse relationship between a firm’sdividend payouts and reliance on bank loan financing. Banks limitdividend payouts to shareholders in order to protect the integrity oftheir senior claims on the firm’s assets. Moreover, dividendpayouts decline in the presence of...

We consider a two-tier inventory management system with one retailer and one supplier. The retailer serves a demand driven by a stationary moving average process (of possibly infinite order) and places periodic inventory replenishment orders to the supplier. In this setting, we study the value...

The well-known weak empirical relationship between beta risk and the cost of equity--thebeta anomaly--generates a simple tradeoff theory: As firms lever up, the overall cost ofcapital falls as leverage increases equity beta, but as debt becomes riskier the marginalbenefit of increasing equity...

Building models for high dimensional portfolios is important in risk management and asset allocation. Here we propose a novel and fast way of estimating models of time-varying covariances that overcome an undiagnosed incidental parameter problem which has troubled existing methods when applied...

This paper provides evidence that habit persistence is an important determinant of household consumption choices, in a setting that allows for heterogeneity and household-specific interest rates. By estimating Euler equations for a representative sample of U.S. credit-card account holders, I...

Performance-sensitivity of compensation schemes for portfolio managers is well explained by classic principal-agent theory as a device to provide incentives for managers to exert effort or bear the cost of acquiring information. However, the majority of compensation packages observed in reality...