Little is known about the performance of the US stock market before 1802, and evidence for the years following 1802 through the 1830s remains scanty. This paper describes a new database on total returns in the US stock market for the first fifty years of its existence, constructed in large part...

This paper frames the decision to purchase a fixed immediate annuity as a wager that can be won or lost. The alternative bet is to hold a portfolio of long government bonds, drawing income and liquidating principal as necessary. There is some probability of ruin in either case: the bond...

This paper constructs new indexes of mutual fund returns from 1926 and compares the returns investors could have realized to published market returns. The stock fund investor would have underperformed by 120 - 158 bp annualized. The balanced fund investor would have lagged in the 1930s and...