If investors are rational, the variance of closed-end mutual fund returns should equal the variance of the underlying securities in their portfolios. In fact, this paper shows that the average closed-end fund's monthly return is 64 percent more volatile than its assets. Unlike variance-bounds...

Entrepreneurs may be legally bound to bequeath a minimal stake to noncontrolling heirs. The size of this stake can reduce investment in family firms, by reducing the future income they can pledge to external financiers. Using a purpose-built indicator of the permissiveness of inheritance law and...

This paper uses an assignment model to understand the cross section of house prices within a metro area. Movers' demand for housing is derived from a life-cycle problem with credit market frictions. Equilibrium house prices adjust to assign houses that differ by quality to movers who differ by...

This paper studies housing markets where a subset of houses in a restricted area is available exclusively to a subset of "eligible" buyers. An empirical part shows that houses on Stanford campus (available only to faculty) trade at substantial discounts to comparable houses off campus. The...

We study time variation in expected excess bond returns. We run regressions of one-year excess returns on initial forward rates. We find that a single factor, a single tent-shaped linear combination of forward rates, predicts excess returns on one- to five-year maturity bonds with R2 up to 0.44....