We examine the importance of cross-sectional asset pricing anomalies (alphas) for the real economy. We develop a novel quantitative model of the cross-section of firms that features lumpy investment and informational inefficiencies, while yielding distributions in closed form. Our findings...

We examine the importance of asset pricing anomalies (alphas) for the real economy. We develop a novel quantitative model with lumpy investment that features such informational inefficiencies and yields closed-form solutions for cross-sectional distributions of firm dynamics. Our findings...

We examine the importance of asset pricing anomalies (alphas) for the real economy. We develop a novel quantitative model with lumpy investment that features such informational inefficiencies and yields closed-form solutions for cross-sectional distributions of firm dynamics. Our findings...

We model firms' allocation of resources across surplus-creating (i.e., productive) and surplus-appropriating (i.e., rent-seeking) activities. Our model predicts that industry-wide technological advancements, such as recent progress in data collection and processing, induce a disproportionate and...