Standard factor models imply a linear relationship between expected returns on assets and their factor exposures. We provide the asymptotic properties of factor-model-based expected return estimators for individual assets and show that exploiting this linear relationship leads to precision gains...

This paper develops a rare disaster asset pricing model with EZ preferences, in particular including the impact of macroeconomic consequences of the COVID-19 disaster. I estimate the probability of disaster, disaster states, and the duration of disaster to shed light on the frequency and size of...

We seek fundamental risks from news text. Conceptually, news is closely related to the idea of systematic risk, in particular the "state variables" in the ICAPM. News captures investors' concerns about future investment opportunities, and hence drives the current pricing kernel. This paper...

We refine the approximate factor model of asset returns by distinguishing between natural rate factors, whose sum of squared factor betas grow at the same rate as the number of assets, and semi-strong factors, whose sum of squared factor betas grow to infinity, but at a slower rate. We...

In this paper, we build efficient portfolios using different frameworks proposed in the literature with several datasets containing an increasing number of predictors as conditioning information. We carry an extensive empirical study to investigate several approaches to impose sparsity and...

Sparse models, though long preferred and pursued by social scientists, can be ineffective or unstable relative to large models, for example, in economic predictions (Giannone et al., 2021). To achieve sparsity for economic interpretation while exploiting big data for superior empirical...

We build regression trees to determine which firm characteristics are most likely to drive future returns. Out of 30 attributes, those related to momentum appear to have, by far, the most marked impact. This prominence is verified at the sector level as well. The second order effects are...