The common perception in the literature is that current dividend yields are uninformative about future dividends, but contain some information about future stock returns. In this paper, we show that this finding reverses when looking at a broad panel of countries outside the U.S.. In particular,...

A sizeable literature reports that financial market analysts and forecasters herd for reputational reasons. Using new data from a large survey of professional forecasters' expectations about stock market movements, we find strong evidence that the expected average of all forecasters' forecasts...

We investigate how banks' capital and lending decisions respond to changes in bankspecific capital and disclosure requirements. We find that an increase in the bankspecific regulatory capital requirement results in a higher bank capital ratio, brought about via less asset risk. A decrease in the...

Several Danish small and medium-sized banks have become distressed during and after the global financial crisis. In this paper, a multiple logistic regression model is used to identify which factors characterize the distressed Danish banks from 2008-12. The factors are chosen from a broad range...

The utility-maximizing consumption and investment strategy of an individual investor receiving an unspanned labor income stream seems impossible to find in closed form and very difficult to find using numerical solution techniques. We suggest an easy procedure for finding a specific, simple, and...

We provide explicit solutions to life-cycle utility maximization problems simultaneously involving dynamic decisions on investments in stocks and bonds, consumption of perishable goods, and the rental and the ownership of residential real estate. House prices, stock prices, interest rates, and...

We show that the optimal consumption of an individual over the life cycle can have the hump shape (inverted U-shape) observed empirically if the preferences of the individual exhibit internal habit formation. In the absence of habit formation, an impatient individual would prefer a decreasing...

The observed hump-shaped life-cycle pattern in individuals' consumption cannot be explained by the classical consumption-savings model. We explicitly solve a model with utility of both consumption and leisure and with educational decisions affecting future wages. We show optimal consumption is...

We solve a rich life-cycle model of household decisions involving consumption of perishable goods and housing services, habit formation for housing consumption, stochastic labor income, stochastic house prices, home renting and owning, stock investments, and portfolio constraints. In line with...

In a calibrated consumption-portfolio model with stock, housing, and labor income predictability, we disentangle the welfare effects of skill and luck. Skilled investors are able to take advantage of all sources of predictability, whereas unskilled investors ignore predictability. Lucky...