A unified framework for understanding asset prices and aggregate fluctuations is critical for understanding both issues. I show that a real business cycle model with external habit preferences and capital adjustment costs provides one such framework. The estimated model matches the first two...

For many economic questions, the empirical results are not interesting unless they are strong. For these questions, theorizing before the results are known is not always optimal. Instead, the optimal sequencing of theory and empirics trades off a "Darwinian Learning" effect from theorizing first...

We develop an estimator for publication bias adjusted returns and apply it to 156 replications of published long-short portfolio returns. Bias-adjusted returns are only 12.3% smaller than sample returns with a standard error of 1.7 percentage points. The small bias comes from the dispersion of...

Many theories of asset prices assume time-varying uncertainty in order to generate time-varying risk premia. This paper generates time-varying uncertainty endogenously, through precautionary saving dynamics. Precautionary motives prescribe that, in bad times, next period's consumption should be...

We develop an estimator for publication bias and apply it to 156 hedge portfolios based on published cross-sectional return predictors. Publication bias adjusted returns are only 12% smaller than in-sample returns. The small bias comes from the dispersion of returns across predictors, which is...