type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>We offer the first empirical evidence on the adverse effect of credit default swap (CDS) coverage on subprime mortgage defaults. Using a large database of privately securitized mortgages, we find that higher defaults concentrate in mortgage pools with concurrent CDS...</p>

This paper demonstrates that the equilibrium impact of capital gains taxes reflects both the capitalization effect (i.e., capital gains taxes decrease demand) and the lock-in effect (i.e., capital gains taxes decrease supply). Depending on time periods and stock characteristics, either effect...

We investigate optimal intertemporal asset allocation and location decisions for investors making taxable and tax-deferred investments. We show a strong preference for holding taxable bonds in the tax-deferred account and equity in the taxable account, reflecting the higher tax burden on taxable...

We study an important recent series of buyback auctions conducted by the U.S. Treasury in retiring $67.5 billion of its illiquid off-the-run debt. The Treasury was successful in buying back large amounts of illiquid debt while suffering only a small market-impact cost. The Treasury included the...

I develop an interest rate model with separate factors driving innovations in bond yields and their covariances. It features a flexible and tractable affine structure for bond covariances. Maximum likelihood estimation of the model with panel data on swaptions and discount bonds implies pricing...

The basic paradigm of asset pricing is in vibrant flux. The purely rational approach is being subsumed by a broader approach based upon the psychology of investors. In this approach, security expected returns are determined by both "risk" and "misvaluation". This survey sketches a framework for...

We propose a theory of securities market under- and overreactions based on two well-known psychological biases: investor overconfidence about the precision of private information; and biased self-attribution, which causes asymmetric shifts in investors' confidence as a function of their...

Psychological evidence and casual intuition predict that sunny weather is associated with upbeat mood. This paper examines the relationship between morning sunshine in the city of a country's leading stock exchange and daily market index returns across 26 countries from 1982 to 1997. Sunshine is...

In existing models of information acquisition, all informed investors receive their information at the same time. This article analyzes trading behavior and equilibrium information acquisition when some investors receive common private information before others. The model implies that, under...

This paper uses pre-offer market valuations to evaluate the misvaluation and "Q" theories of takeovers. Bidder and target valuations (price-to-book, or price-to-residual-income-model-value) are related to means of payment, mode of acquisition, premia, target hostility, offer success, and bidder...