"We develop a life-cycle consumption and portfolio choice model in which households have nonhomothetic utility over two types of goods, basic and luxury. We calibrate the model to match the cross-sectional and life-cycle variation in the basic expenditure share in the Consumer Expenditure...

"Open interest, or the amount of contracts outstanding in futures markets, has remarkable power to forecast commodity, currency, bond, and stock prices. Changes in open interest are highly pro-cyclical and predict asset-price fluctuations better than a number of alternative variables including...

The demand for durable goods is more cyclical than that for nondurable goods and services. Consequently, the cash flow and stock returns of durable-good producers are exposed to higher systematic risk. Using the NIPA input-output tables, we construct portfolios of durable-good, nondurable-good,...

Movements in the value of corporate assets are justified by changes in expected future cash flow. The appropriate measure of cash flow for valuing assets is net payout, which is the sum of dividends, interest, and net repurchases of equity and debt. When discount rates are low and equity...