When the neoclassical model of investment is serious about investment, it fails to replicate elementary cross-sectional features of equity returns. Without leverage, the model produces a value discount - i.e. value firms earn lower returns than growth firms. With large enough operating leverage,...

Do firm entry and exit play a major role in shaping aggregate dynamics? Our answer is yes. Entry and exit propagate the effects of aggregate shocks. In turn, this results in greater persistence and unconditional variation of aggregate time-series. These are features of the equilibrium allocation...

In this paper we provide a thorough characterization of the asset returns implied by a simple general equilibrium production economy with Chew-Dekel risk preferences and convex capital adjustment costs. When households display levels of disappointment aversion consistent with the experimental...

We study the problem of an investor who buys an equity stake in an entrepreneurial venture, under the assumption that the former cannot monitor the latter's operations. The dynamics implied by the optimal incentive scheme is rich and quite different from that induced by other models of repeated...

Does investor protection foster economic growth? To assess the widely held affirmative view, we introduce investor protection into a standard overlapping generations model of capital accumulation. Better investor protection implies better risk sharing. Because of entrepreneurs' risk aversion,...

We estimate the volatility of plant-level idiosyncratic shocks in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Our measure of volatility is the variation in Revenue Total Factor Productivity which is not explained by either industry- or economy-wide factors, or by establishments' characteristics. Consistent...