A dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with recursive utility, search frictions, and capital accumulation is a good start to forming a unified theory of asset prices and business cycles. The model reproduces an equity premium of 4.27% per annum, a stock market volatility of 12.42%, and an average interest rate of 1.97%, while retaining plausible business cycle dynamics. The equity premium and stock market volatility are strongly countercyclical, whereas the interest rate and consumption growth are largely unpredictable. Because of wage inertia, dividends are procyclical despite consumption smoothing via investment. The welfare cost of business cycles is huge, 33.6%.

Within the standard search and matching model, time-to-build implies that high aggregate risk premiums should forecast low employment growth in the short run but high employment growth in the long run. If there is also time-to-plan, high risk premiums should forecast low net hiring rates in the short run but high net hiring rates in the long run. Our evidence indicates two-quarter time-to-build in the aggregate payroll data, no time-to-plan in the aggregate hiring data, but two-quarter time-to-plan in the job creation data for manufacturing firms. High payroll growth and high net job creation rate in manufacturing also forecast low stock market excess returns at business cycle frequencies.

Embedding disasters into a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms induces strong nonlinearity in the pricing kernel, helping explain the empirical failure of the (consumption) CAPM. Our single-factor model reproduces the failure of the CAPM in explaining the value premium in finite samples without disasters and its relative success in samples with disasters. Due to beta measurement errors, the estimated beta-return relation is flat, consistent with the beta “anomaly,” even though the true beta-return relation is strongly positive. Finally, the consumption CAPM fails in simulations, even though a nonlinear model with the true pricing kernel holds exactly by construction.