Common explanations of the low volatility anomaly involve biases or frictions that cause investors to overpay for high volatility assets, giving them a negative alpha within the CAPM model, yet currently all such mechanisms are either heuristic or partial equilibrium. This paper shows that...

Empirically, standard, intuitive measures of risk like volatility and beta do not generate a positive correlation with average returns in most asset classes. It is possible that risk, however defined, is not positively related to return as an equilibrium in asset markets. This paper presents a...

This paper explains and documents many issues related to default prediction based on financial statements. The underlying methodology is completely revealed and addresses many important practicalities in empirical default estimation. Test statistics are also provided on various models using our...

This paper presents a method and testing of a corporate nonfinancial default model. Unique among models, it uses agency ratings as as input within the model, as well as financial statement and market information (e.g., Merton model). The default problem is defined as having a flat maximum,...

This paper argues that in general risk is not empirically correlated with returns in any obvious way. This puzzle is explained as the implication of a utility function in which if people care only about relative wealth, risk is a deviation from what everyone else is doing, and therefore becomes...