We show that mutual funds contribute to cross-sectional momentum and excess volatility through positive feedback trading. Stocks held by positive feedback funds exhibit much stronger momentum, almost doubling the returns from a simple momentum strategy. This “enhanced” momentum is robust to...

The ratio of long- to short-term dividend prices, “price ratio” (pr), predicts annual market return with an out-of-sample R2 of 19%, subsuming the predictive power of price-dividend ratio (pd). After controlling for pr, pd predicts dividend growth with an out-of-sample R2 of 30%. Our results...

This dissertation consists of four essays exploring how people form beliefs and make decisions in the financial markets and their implications for asset prices. Two common threads run through this dissertation: the persistence of key state variables and the less-than-fully-rational approach to...