The flattening of yield curves at long-term maturities is proven to be approximately proportional to the reciprocal of the time to maturity under general conditions. This is a consequence of the persistence of earlier forward rates in the averaging process which produces yields from forward...

A decade ago Fama and French (1988) estimated that 40% of variation in stock returns was predictable over horizons of 3-5 years, which they attributed to a mean reverting stationary component in prices. While it has been clear that the Depression and war years exert a strong influence on these...