We use differences between the attributes of stock issuers and repurchasers to forecast characteristic-related stock returns. For example, we show that large firms underperform following years when issuing firms are large relative to repurchasing firms. Our approach is useful for forecasting...

We show that the credit quality of corporate debt issuers deteriorates during credit booms, and that this deterioration forecasts low excess returns to corporate bondholders. The key insight is that changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the financing costs faced by low...

When a bank experiences a negative shock to its equity, one way to return to target leverage is to sell assets. If asset sales occur at depressed prices, then one bank's sales may impact other banks with common exposures, resulting in contagion. We propose a simple framework that accounts for...

We analyze time-series of investor expectations of future stock market returns from six data sources between 1963 and 2011. The six measures of expectations are highly positively correlated with each other, as well as with past stock returns and with the level of the stock market. However,...

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need to deal with a surge of financial distress in the business sector. Some firms will be able to survive, while others will face bankruptcy and thus need to be liquidated or reorganized. Many surviving firms will need to...

We present an extrapolative model of bubbles. In the model, many investors form their demand for a risky asset by weighing two signals—an average of the asset's past price changes and the asset's degree of overvaluation. The two signals are in conflict, and investors “waver” over time in...

Recent research documents that ownership concentration is higher in countries with weak investor protection. However, drawing on panel data on corporate ownership in 34 countries between 1995 and 2006, we show this pattern does not hold for newly public firms, which tend to have concentrated...

Reflexivity is the idea that investors' biased beliefs affect market outcomes, and that market outcomes in turn affect investors' beliefs. We develop a behavioral model of the credit cycle featuring such a two-way feedback loop. In our model, investors form beliefs about firms' creditworthiness,...

We use mutual fund manager data from the technology bubble to examine the hypothesis that inexperienced investors play a role in the formation of asset price bubbles. Using age as a proxy for managers' investment experience, we find that around the peak of the technology bubble, mutual funds run...

We argue that time-series variation in the maturity of aggregate corporate debt issues arises because firms behave as macro liquidity providers, absorbing the large supply shocks associated with changes in the maturity structure of government debt. We document that when the government funds...