We investigate the empirical implications of using various measures of payout yield rather than dividend yield for asset pricing models. We find statistically and economically significant predictability in the time series when payout (dividends plus repurchases) and net payout (dividends plus...

This article provides an analytical solution to the problem of an institution optimally managing the market risk of a given exposure by minimizing its Value-at-Risk using options. The optimal hedge consists of a position in a single option whose strike price is independent of the level of...

This paper investigates the relation between returns on stock indices and their corresponding futures contracts in order to evaluate potential explanations for the pervasive yet anomalous evidence of positive, short-horizon portfolio autocorrelations. Using a simple theoretical framework, we...

The behavioral finance literature cites the frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ) futures market as a prominent example of the failure of prices to reflect fundamentals. This paper reexamines the relation between FCOJ futures returns and fundamentals, focusing primarily on temperature. We show...

This paper investigates the implications of a 2-regime model of the business cycle for term premiums and volatilities in the bond market. The model, which is estimated via maximum likelihood using GDP, consumption and production data, has two key features -- mean growth rates that vary across...

This paper investigates the relation between returns on stock indices and their corresponding futures contracts in order to evaluate potential explanations for the pervasive yet anomalous evidence of positive, short-horizon portfolio autocorrelations. Using a simple theoretical framework, we...

A vector autoregressive (VAR) model is used to describe the joint dynamics of consumption growth and inflation. The commonly used homoscedastic VAR is extended to allow for stochastic volatility, driven by an unobservable autoregressive factor. Bond prices, the conditional expectation of a...

The forward premium anomaly is one of the most robust puzzles in financial economics. We recast the underlying parity relation in terms of cross-country differences between forward interest rates rather than spot interest rates with dramatic results. These forward interest rate differentials...