We study the interaction of noisy demand and skewed asset payoffs. In our model, price as a function of quantities is convex in a neighborhood around zero if and only if skewness is positive. The combination of convexity and noise produces the idiosyncratic skewness effect--a documented negative...

Investors’ return on their portfolios, as proxied by the market, is a theoretically appealing but empirically unsuccessful asset pricing factor. In practice, many institutional investors choose to deviate substantially from the market portfolio. We propose a simple model in the spirit of...

We develop a new asset pricing theory that bridges two seemingly unrelated anomalies: (1) the negative relationship between dispersion in financial analysts’ earnings forecasts and expected returns and (2) the negative relationship between ex-ante skewness and expected returns. The results...

When expected returns are linear in asset characteristics, the stochastic discount factor (SDF) that prices individual stocks can be represented as a factor model with GLS cross-sectional regression slope factors. Factors constructed heuristically by aggregating individual stocks into...

When expected returns are linear in asset characteristics, the stochastic discount factor (SDF) that prices individual stocks can be represented as a factor model with GLS cross-sectional regression slope factors. Factors constructed heuristically by aggregating individual stocks into...

We develop a model in which leveraged buyout (LBO) transactions are sensitive to variation in pricing conditions. The privatization of the firm generates value by eliminating agency costs that impede the firm's growth; however, LBO investors require compensation to commit their capital to a...