Theoretically, corporate debt is economically equivalent to safe debt minus a put option on the firm’s assets. We empirically show that indeed portfolios of long Treasuries and short traded put options ("pseudo bonds") closely match the properties of traded corporate bonds. Pseudo bonds...

We empirically analyze the pricing of political uncertainty, guided by a theoretical model of government policy choice. After deriving the model's predictions for option prices, we test those predictions in an international sample of national elections and global summits. We find that political...

During technological revolutions, stock prices of innovative firms tend to exhibit high volatility and bubble-like patterns, which are often attributed to investor irrationality. We develop a general equilibrium model that rationalizes the observed price patterns. The high volatility results...

This Paper reinterprets standard axioms in choice theory to introduce the concepts of ‘belief dependent’ utility functions and aversion to ‘state-uncertainty’. It shows that this type of preference helps to explain the various stylized facts of asset returns, including a high equity risk...

We survey the recent literature on learning in financial markets. Our main theme is that many financial market phenomena that appear puzzling at first sight are easier to understand once we recognize that parameters in financial models are uncertain and subject to learning. We discuss phenomena...

We develop a model in which an entrepreneur learns about the average profitability of a private firm before deciding whether to take the firm public. In this decision, the entrepreneur trades off diversification benefits of going public against benefits of private control. The model predicts...

We develop a model of stock valuation and optimal IPO timing when investment opportunities are time-varying. IPO waves in our model are caused by declines in expected returns, increases in expected profitability, or increases in prior uncertainty about average profitability. The model predicts...

We develop a simple approach to valuing stocks in the presence of learning about average profitability. The market-to-book ratio (M/B) increases with uncertainty about average profitability, especially for firms that pay no dividends. M/B is predicted to decline over a firm's lifetime due to...

We analyze how changes in government policy affect stock prices. Our general equilibrium model features uncertainty about government policy and a government that has both economic and non-economic motives. The government tends to change its policy after performance downturns in the private...

Not necessarily. The fundamental value of a firm increases with uncertainty about average future profitability, and this uncertainty was unusually high in the late 1990s. We calibrate a stock valuation model that includes this uncertainty, and show that the uncertainty needed to match the...