This paper explores the determinants of corporate failure and the pricing of financially distressed stocks using US data over the period 1963 to 2003. Firms with higher leverage, lower profitability, lower market capitalization, lower past stock returns, more volatile past stock returns, lower...

In the presence of overlapping generations, markets are incomplete because it is impossible to engage in risksharing trades with the unborn. In such an environment the government can use a social security system, with contingent taxes and benefits, to improve risksharing across generations. An...

This paper investigates the dynamics of individual portfolios in a unique dataset containing the disaggregated wealth of all households in Sweden. Between 1999 and 2002, we observe little aggregate rebalancing in the financial portfolio of participants. These patterns conceal strong...

This paper investigates the efficiency of household investment decisions using comprehensive disaggregated Swedish data. We consider two main sources of inefficiency: underdiversification (quot;downquot;) and nonparticipation in risky asset markets (quot;outquot;). While a few households are...

This paper investigates the efficiency of household investment decisions in a unique dataset containing the disaggregated wealth and income of the entire population of Sweden. The analysis focuses on two main sources of inefficiency in the financial portfolio: underdiversification of risky...

This paper investigates the relationship between stock market trading volume and the autocorrelations of daily stock index returns. The paper finds that stock return autocorrelations tend to decline with trading volume. The paper explains this phenomenon using a model in which risk-averse...

This paper uses data on house transactions in the state of Massachusetts over the last 20 years to show that houses sold after foreclosure, or close in time to the death or bankruptcy of at least one seller, are sold at lower prices than other houses. Foreclosure discounts are particularly large...

To estimate the equity premium, it is helpful to use finance theory: not the old-fashioned theory that efficient markets imply a constant equity premium, but theory that restricts the time-series behavior of valuation ratios, and that links the cross-section of stock prices to the level of the...

Small sample properties of parameter estimates and test statistics in the vector autoregressive dividend ratio model (Campbell and Shiller [1988 a,b]) are derived by stochastic simulation. The data generating processes are co integrated vector autoregressive models, estimated subject to...

Economic growth, low inflation, and financial stability are among the most important goals of policy makers, and central banks such as the Federal Reserve are key institutions for achieving these goals. In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, leading scholars and practitioners probe the interaction...