Evidence of stock return predictability by financial ratios is still controversial as documented by inconsistent results for in-sample and out-of-sample regressions as well as substantial parameter instability. This paper shows that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if the...

Value stocks have higher exposure to innovations in the nominal bond risk premium than growth stocks. Since the nominal bond risk premium measures cyclical variation in the market’s assessment of future output growth, this results in a value risk premium provided that good news about future...

We examine the pricing of financial crash insurance during the 2007-2009 financial crisis in U.S. option markets. A large amount of aggregate tail risk is missing from the price of financial sector crash insurance during the financial crisis. The difference in costs of out-of-the-money put...

We derive new estimates of total wealth, the returns on total wealth, and the wealth effect on consumption. We estimate the prices of aggregate risk from bond yields and stock returns using a no-arbitrage model. Using these risk prices, we compute total wealth as the price of a claim to...

How to evaluate a fund manager’s skill is a central question in empirical finance. Prior literature has defined skill as an ability to either pick stocks or time the market, at all times. We propose a new definition of skill as a general cognitive ability used in different ways at different...

This paper proposes a dynamic risk-based model that captures the high expected returns on value stocks relative to growth stocks, and the failure of the capital asset pricing model to explain these expected returns. To model the difference between value and growth stocks, we introduce a...

Among the most important pieces of empirical evidence against the standard representative agent, consumption-based asset pricing paradigm are the formidable unconditional Euler equation errors the model produces for cross-sections of asset returns. Here we ask whether calibrated leading asset...

Aggregate stock prices, relative to virtually any indicator of fundamental value, soared to unprecedented levels in the 1990s. Even today, after the market declines since 2000, they remain well above historical norms. Why? We consider one particular explanation: a fall in macroeconomic risk, or...

We develop a consumption-based present value relation that is a function of future dividend growth. Using data on aggregate consumption and measures of the dividend payments from aggregate wealth, we show that changing forecasts of dividend growth make an important contribution to fluctuations...

Are excess stock market returns predictable over time and, if so, at what horizons and with which economic indicators? Can stock return predictability be explained by changes in stock market volatility? How does the mean return per unit risk change over time? This chapter reviews what is known...