Uncertainty has qualitatively different implications than risk in studying executive incentives. We study the interplay between profitability uncertainty and moral hazard, where profitability is multiplicative with managerial effort. Investors who face greater uncertainty desire faster learning,...

In this paper we study the implications of general-purpose technological growth for asset prices. The model features two types of shocks: quot;smallquot;, frequent, and disembodied shocks to productivity and quot;largequot; technological innovations, which are embodied into new vintages of the...

This paper examines a new set of implications for existing asset pricing models regarding the correlation between returns and consumption growth over both the short run and the long run. The fi ndings suggest that external habit formation models face a challenge in producing two robust facts in...

This study documents the influence of investor sentiment on the market's mean-variance tradeoff. We find that the stock market's expected excess return is positively related to the market's conditional variance in low-sentiment periods but unrelated to variance in high-sentiment periods. These...

This paper introduces profitability uncertainty into an infinite-horizon variation of the classic Holmstrom and Milgrom (1987) model, and studies optimal dynamic contracting with endogenous learning. The agent's potential belief manipulation leads to the hidden information problem, which makes...

We develop a model in which the capital of the intermediary sector plays a critical role in determining asset prices. The model is cast within a dynamic general equilibrium economy, and the role for intermediation is derived endogenously based on optimal contracting considerations. Low...

Firms commonly spread out their debt expirations across time to reduce the liquidity risk generated by large quantities of debt expiring at the same time. By doing so, they introduce a dynamic coordination problem. In deciding whether to rollover his debt, each maturing creditor is concerned...

This paper studies the optimal compensation problem between shareholders and the agent in a general cash-flow setup, and offers a framework to quantitatively assess the impact of agency problems. Under the structural model of capital structure studied in Leland (1994), we find that the...

This paper studies a dynamic agency problem where a risk-averse agent can privately save. In the optimal contract, 1) cash compensations exhibit downward rigidity to failures; 2) permanent pay raises occur when the agent's historical performance is sufficiently good; 3) and when the agent is...

This paper develops a model to explain the widely used investment mandates in the institutional asset management industry based on two insights: First, giving a manager more investment flexibility weakens the link between fund performance and his effort in the designated market, and thus...