When people share risk in financial markets, intermediaries provide costly enforcement for most trades and, hence, are an integral part of financial markets' organization. We assess the degree of risk sharing that can be achieved through financial markets when enforcement is based on the threat...

We provide an analytical and flexible framework to evaluate incentive options. Our model not only considers vesting periods and trading and hedging restrictions on the holders, but also specifically includes provisions of reloading and resetting to capture the fact that firms tend to grant more...

This paper explores the quantitative impact of the Baby Boom on stock and bond returns. It constructs a neoclassical growth model with overlapping generations, in which agents make a portfolio decision over risky capital and safe bonds in zero net supply. The model has exogenous technology and...

We extend the standard specification of the market price of risk for affine yield models of the term structure of interest rates, and estimate several models using the extended specification. For most models, the extended specification fits US data better than standard specifications, often with...

This paper develops a search-theoretic model of the cross-sectional distribution of asset returns. It abstracts from risk premia and focuses exclusively on liquidity. A float-adjusted return model (FARM) is derived, explaining the pricing of liquidity with a simple linear formula: In...

In this article we construct a model in which agents exhibit preference for ownership with respect to a durable (house). Ownership is modeled as a continuous function of debt service normalized by the price of the house. We study the utility optimization problem of an investor not endowed with...

Using a generalized cross-spectral approach, we propose a model-free omnibus statistical procedure to check whether the direction of changes in an economic variable is predictable using the history of its past changes. A class of separate inference procedures are also given to gauge possible...

We study the impact on asset prices of illiquidity associated with search and bargaining in an economy in which agents can trade only when they find each other. Marketmakers' prices are higher and bid-ask spreads are lower if investors can find each other more easily. Prices become Walrasian as...

In this paper we investigate portfolio coskewness using a quadratic market model as return generating process. It is shown that portfolios of small (large) firms have negative (positive) coskewness with market. An asset pricing model including coskewness is tested through the restrictions it...

A leading explanation of aggregate stock market behavior suggests that assets are priced as if there were a representative investor whose utility is a power function of the difference between aggregate consumption and a "habit" level, where the habit is some function of lagged and (possibly)...