While empirical literature has documented a negative relation between default risk and stock returns, theory suggests that default risk should be positively priced. In this paper, we calculate monthly probabilities of default (PDs) for a large sample of European firms and break them down into...

We show that an increase in a stock's breadth of institutional ownership or turnover is followed by a significant but temporary increase in its CAPM beta estimate and a decrease in its CAPM alpha. The increasing effect of breadth of ownership on beta estimates strengthens if we classify...

We provide evidence that institutions place lower trading priority and delay their trading in small, illiquid stocks. The slow trading of small stocks in turn delays the adjustment of small stock prices. In contrast, for large, liquid stocks, institutions demand immediacy, which generates some...