Knowledge that Transforms

This paper introduces a model free decomposition of S&P 500 forward market index returns in terms of realized and implied dispersion, downside, and tail risk using option portfolios. The decomposition lends itself by construction to learn about the different sources of risk in the market return and subsequently to visual and formal diagnosing of asset pricing models. It utilizes a novel conditional frequency analysis on the basis of available options rather than the times series of the S&P 500. Empirically, downside risk accounts for most of the forward market return, while symmetric tail risk is not prominently featured. The predictable, persistent part of the realized return is small. Nevertheless, signals revealed by this risk anatomy provide predictive out of sample power for realized returns, in particular for longer maturities. Furthermore, it indicates that models with identically and independently distributed state variables are generally misspecified in this market, and that care must be taken when calibrating disaster risk models. A formal test based on the risk anatomy rejects a model with time-varying disaster intensity.

This paper examines whether employees involved in residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) securitization experienced internal and external labor market consequences relative to similar non-RMBS employees in the same banks and why. Senior RMBS bankers experienced similar levels of job retention, promotion, and external job opportunities. Even signers of RMBS deals with high loss and misreporting rates or deals implicated in lawsuits experienced no adverse internal or external labor market outcomes. These findings are likely not explained by targeted or delayed employee discipline, small legal fines, or protection due to pending litigation but are consistent with implicit upper-management approval of RMBS activities.

We use detailed information on individual absent spells of all employees in 4140 firms in Denmark to show large differences in average absenteeism across firms. Using employees who switch firms, we decompose days absent into an individual component (e.g., motivation, work ethic) and a firm component (e.g., incentives, corporate culture). We find the firm component explains 50%–60% of the difference in absenteeism across firms, with the individual component explaining the rest. We present suggestive evidence of the mechanisms behind the firm effect with family firm status and concentrated ownership strongly correlated with decreases in absenteeism. We also analyze the firm characteristics that correlate with the individual effect and find that firms with stronger career incentives attract lower-absenteeism employees.

Employing a classic measure of technological closeness between firms, we show that the returns of technology-linked firms have strong predictive power for focal firm returns. A long-short strategy based on this effect yields monthly alpha of 117 basis points. This effect is distinct from industry momentum and is not easily attributable to risk-based explanations. It is more pronounced for focal firms that: (a) have a more intense and specific technology focus, (b) receive lower investor attention, and (c) are more difficult to arbitrage. Our results are broadly consistent with sluggish price adjustment to more nuanced technological news.

Does the provision of leverage to retail traders improve market quality or facilitate socially inefficient speculation that enriches financial intermediaries? We evaluate the effects of 2010 regulations that cap leverage in the U.S. retail foreign exchange market. Using three unique data sets and a difference-in-differences approach, we document that the leverage-constraint reduces trading volume by 23%, alleviates high-leverage traders’ losses by 40%, and reduces brokerages’ operating capital by 25%. Yet, the policy does not affect the relative bid-ask prices charged by the brokerages. These results suggest the policy improves belief-neutral social welfare without reducing market liquidity.

We characterize when physical probabilities, marginal utilities, and the discount rate can be recovered from observed state prices for several future time periods. We make no assumptions of the probability distribution, thus generalizing the time-homogeneous stationary model of Ross (2015). Recovery is feasible when the number of maturities with observable prices is higher than the number of states of the economy (or the number of parameters characterizing the pricing kernel). When recovery is feasible, our model allows a closed-form linearized solution. We implement our model empirically, testing the predictive power of the recovered expected return and other recovered statistics.

This study examines whether mood affects the aggregate state-level macroeconomy through its impact on firm-level decisions. Using sky cloud cover as a proxy for mood, we show that mood affects the economic expectations of small business managers. After relatively sunnier periods, managers have more optimistic expectations, and the component of their expectations related to mood influences hiring and investment decisions. Consequently, mood affects state-level job creation and new business starts, especially during periods of greater economic uncertainty. These results suggest that mood-induced economic expectations influence firm-level managerial decisions and state-level macroeconomic fluctuations.

Recent studies show that the standard test portfolios do not contain sufficient information to discriminate between asset pricing models. To address this issue, we develop a large-scale approach that expands the cross-section to several thousand portfolios. Our novel approach is simple, widely applicable, and allows for formal evaluation/comparison tests. Its benefits are confirmed in empirical tests of CAPM- and characteristic-based models. While these models are all misspecified, we uncover striking performance differences between them. In particular, the human capital and conditional CAPMs largely outperform the CAPM, which suggests that labor income and time-varying recession risks are primary concerns for investors.

Corporate leverage responds differently to employees’ rights in bankruptcy depending on whether it is driven by strategic concerns in wage bargaining or by credit constraints. Using novel data on employees’ rights in bankruptcy, we estimate their impact on leverage, exploiting time-series, cross-country, and firm-level variation in the data. For financially unconstrained firms, results accord with the strategic debt model: leverage increases more in response to rises in corporate property values or profitability if employees have strong seniority in liquidation and weak rights in restructuring. Instead, in financially constrained firms leverage responds less to these shocks if employees have stronger seniority.

This paper introduces a new out-of-sample forecasting methodology for monthly market returns using the variance risk premium (VRP) that is both statistically and economically significant. This methodology is motivated by the ‘beta representation,’ which implies that the market risk premium is related to the price of variance risk by the variance risk exposure. Hence, when the slope of the contemporaneous regression of market returns on variance innovation is larger, future returns are more sharply related to the current VRP. Also, predictions are more accurate when market returns are highly correlated to variance shocks.