This paper studies the equilibrium term structure of nominal and real interest rates and the time-varying bond risk premia implied by a stochastic endogenous growth model with imperfect price adjustment and monetary policy shocks. The production and price-setting decisions of firms drive low-frequency movements in growth and inflation rates that are negatively related. With recursive preferences, these growth and inflation dynamics are crucial for rationalizing key stylized facts in bond markets. When calibrated to macroeconomic data, the model quantitatively explains the means and volatilities of nominal bond yields and the failure of the expectations hypothesis.

Size and value premia comove strongly with one another at low frequencies, but they are both negatively related to long-run movements in the equity premium. We explain these patterns in an investment-based asset pricing model featuring persistent micro and macro uncertainty. Micro uncertainty generates size and value premia waves, while macroeconomic uncertainty produces equity premium waves. The negative correlation between micro and macro uncertainty at low frequencies explains why the equity premium is a long-term hedge for size and value premia. Persistent micro uncertainty is also a source of instability for size and value factors in short samples.

[The surge in public debt triggered by the financial crisis has raised uncertainty about future tax pressure and economic activity. We examine the asset pricing effects of fiscal policies in a production-based general equilibrium model in which taxation affects corporate decisions by: (1) distorting profits and investment; (2) reducing the cost of debt through a tax shield; and (3) depressing productivity growth. In settings with recursive preferences, these three tax-based channels generate sizable risk premia, making tax uncertainty a first-order concern. We document further that corporate tax smoothing can substantially alter the effects of public expenditure shocks.]

We introduce a present-value identity relating a firm’s market value to expected future markups, output growth, discount rates, and investments. Distinguishing current from expected markups reveals five empirical facts: (1) Expected markups account for half the rise in U.S. firm values since 1980. (2) The rise in aggregate expected markups reflects market-share reallocation toward high-expected-markup firms and within-firm increases. (3) Expected markups are linked to intangible investments. (4) They relate negatively to discount rates over time but (5) positively to abnormal returns across firms. Finally, variation in long-term expected markups is primarily associated with asset prices rather than current markups.

This paper examines how uncertainty affects corporate investment under varying degrees of asset redeployability. We develop new measures of asset redeployability by accounting for the usability of assets within and across industries. We identify plausibly exogenous shocks to economic uncertainty by using major economic and political events. We find that after an increase in uncertainty, firms using less redeployable capital reduce investment more. More redeployable assets exhibit higher recovery rates and are traded more actively in secondary markets. Overall, our results suggest that frictions in redeploying assets affect liquidation values and therefore make firms cautious about investment decisions under uncertainty.

We document that the increasing polarization in Tobin’s Q within industries is closely connected to the growing divergence in rents and the emergence of superstar firms over the past four decades, while discount rates and growth rates did not exhibit the same increasing dispersion. We explain these industry polarization trends in an estimated general equilibrium model where each industry consists of large superstar oligopolists and small monopolistically competitive firms with endogenous transitions between them. Small firms make investments in speculative innovation to increase their probability of becoming superstars. Our model estimation finds that rising entry barriers in both small and superstar firms contribute to rising polarization in markups, but the rising barriers to creating small firms and increasing tastes for goods produced by superstars account for most of the divergence in Q. Stunting the creation of small firms generates greater incentives for speculative innovation, magnifying the impact of market power dispersion on industry polarization in Q.

This paper jointly examines the link between competition and expected returns in the time series and in the cross-section. To this end, we build a general equilibrium model where markups vary because of firm entry with oligopolistic competition. When concentration is high, markups are more sensitive to entry risk. We find that higher markups are associated with higher expected returns over time and across industries, in line with the data. The model can also quantitatively account for the persistent rise in aggregate risk premiums and macroeconomic volatility associated with the secular increase trend industry concentration since the mid-1980s.

We examine the asset pricing implications of a production economy whose long‐term growth prospects are endogenously determined by innovation and R&D. In equilibrium, R&D endogenously drives a small, persistent component in productivity that generates long‐run uncertainty about economic growth. With recursive preferences, households fear that persistent downturns in economic growth are accompanied by low asset valuations and command high‐risk premia in asset markets. Empirically, we find substantial evidence for innovation‐driven low‐frequency movements in aggregate growth rates and asset market valuations. In short, equilibrium growth is risky.

We use a high-frequency identification approach to document that individual politicians affect asset prices. We exploit the regular flow of viewpoints contained in Congress members’ tweets. Supportive (critical) tweets increase (decrease) the stock prices of the targeted firm and the corresponding industry in minutes around the tweet. The bulk of the stock price effects is concentrated in the tweets revealing news about future legislative action. The effects are amplified around committee meeting days, especially when the tweet originates from committee members and influential politicians. Overall, we show that Congress members’ social media accounts are an important source of political news.

This paper examines how the transmission of government portfolio risk arising from maturity operations depends on the stance of monetary/fiscal policy. Accounting for risk premia in the fiscal theory allows the government portfolio to affect expected inflation, even in a frictionless economy. The effects of maturity rebalancing on expected inflation in the fiscal theory depend directly on the conditional nominal term premium, giving rise to an optimal debt‐maturity policy that is state‐dependent. In a calibrated macrofinance model, we demonstrate that maturity operations have sizable effects on expected inflation and output through our novel risk transmission mechanism.