In this paper we address three main objections of behavioral finance to the theory of rational finance, considered as “anomalies” the theory of rational finance cannot explain: (i) Predictability of asset returns; (ii) The Equity Premium; (iii) The Volatility Puzzle. We offer resolutions of...

Since the work by Stigler on the economics of information in the early 1960s, economists have paid closer attention to the role of search for information. However, search methods are not considered in the theory of portfolio choice. We present a model of investor search behavior in order to...

In complete markets, there are risky assets and a riskless asset. It is assumed that the riskless asset and the risky asset are traded continuously in time and that the market is frictionless. In this paper, we propose a new method for hedging derivatives assuming that a hedger should not always...

We prove the existence of statistical arbitrage opportunities for jump-diffusion models of stock prices when the jump-size distribution is assumed to have finite moments. We show that to obtain statistical arbitrage, the risky asset holding must go to zero in time. Existence of statistical...

This paper analyses the differences between food and nondurable consumption data. Due to the lack of annual panel data on households' nondurable consumption, many empirical studies that test for the permanent income hypothesis, consumption insurance hypothesis, or to estimate the elasticity of...

Following the 2007-09 financial crisis, mainstream finance theory was criticized for failing to forecast the market crash, which resulted in large losses for investors. Has our finance theory, which many consider an idealization that does not take reality into account, failed investors? Do we...

Various studies report that investing in “sin stocks”, that is firms which make money from human vice, such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling and weapons, has historically delivered significantly positive abnormal returns. This finding has inspired the hypothesis that sin stocks are being...

If the closed-form formula for the probability density function is not available, implementing the maximum likelihood estimation is challenging. We introduce a simple, fast, and accurate way for the estimation of numerous distributions that belong to the class of tempered stable probability...

This paper examines the economic implications of new factor models and shows that the Hou, Xue, and Zhang (HXZ, 2015a) four-factor model outperforms the Fama and French (FF5, 2015a) five-factor model for investing in anomalies in- and out-of-sample. The difference in certainty-equivalent returns...