The neoclassical q-theory is a good start to understand the cross section of returns. Under constant return to scale, stock returns equal levered investment returns that are tied directly with characteristics. This equation generates the relations of average returns with book-to-market,...

More financially constrained firms are riskier and earn higher expected returns than less financially constrained firms, although this effect can be subsumed by size and book-to-market. Further, because the stochastic discount factor makes capital investment more procyclical, financial...

Previous work shows that the growth rate of industrial production is a common macroeconomic risk factor in the cross-section of expected returns. We demonstrate the connection between momentum profits and shifts in factor loadings on this macroeconomic variable. Winners have temporarily higher...

I construct a neoclassical, Q-theoretical foundation for time-varying expected returns in connection with corporate policies and events. Under certain conditions, stock return equals investment return, which is directly tied with firm characteristics. This single equation is shown analytically...

We incorporate costly external finance in an investment-based asset pricing model and investigate whether financing frictions are quantitatively important for pricing a cross-section of expected returns. We show that common assumptions about the nature of the financing frictions are captured by...

This paper asks whether the asset pricing fluctuations induced by the presence of costly external finance are empirically plausible. To accomplish this, we incorporate costly external finance into a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model and explore its implications for the properties of...

Adding a return factor based on capital investment into standard, calendar-time factor regressions makes underperformance following seasoned equity offerings largely insignificant and reduces its magnitude by 37-46%. The reason is that issuers invest more than nonissuers matched on size and...

Recent studies have used the value spread to predict aggregate stock returns to construct cash-flow betas that appear to explain the size and value anomalies. We show that two related variables, the book-to-market spread (the book-to-market of value stocks minus that of growth stocks) and the...

We use a fully-specified neoclassical model augmented with costly external equity as a laboratory to study the relations between stock returns and equity financing decisions. Simulations show that the model can simultaneously and in many cases quantitatively reproduce: procyclical equity issuance;...

Motivated from investment-based asset pricing, we propose a new factor model consisting of the market factor, a size factor, an investment factor, and a return on equity factor. The new factor model outperforms the Carhart four-factor model in pricing portfolios formed on earnings surprise,...