We study the out-of-sample performance of portfolio trading strategies used when an investor faces capital gain taxation and proportional transaction costs. Overlaying simple tax trading heuristics on trading strategies improves out-of-sample performance. For medium to large transaction costs, no trading strategy can outperform a 1/N trading strategy augmented with a tax heuristic, not even the most tax and transaction cost-efficient buy-and-hold strategy. Overall, the best strategy is 1/N augmented with a heuristic that allows for a fixed deviation in absolute portfolio weights. Our results thus show that the best trading strategies balance diversification considerations and tax considerations.

We study the consumption-portfolio problem in a setting with capital gain taxes and multiple risky stocks to understand how short selling influences portfolio choice with a shorting-the-box restriction. Our analysis uncovers a novel trading flexibility strategy whereby, to minimize future tax-induced trading costs, the investor optimally shorts one of the stocks (or equivalently, buys put options) even when no stock has an embedded gain. Alternatively, an imperfect form of shorting the box can reduce aggregate equity exposure ex post. Given these two short selling strategies, it is common for an unconstrained investor to short some equity while a constrained investor holds a positive investment in all stocks. With no shorting, the benefit of trading separately in multiple stocks is not economically significant.

We show that inflation disagreement, not just expected inflation, has an impact on nominal interest rates. In contrast to expected inflation, which mainly affects the wedge between real and nominal yields, inflation disagreement affects nominal yields predominantly through its impact on the real side of the economy. We show theoretically and empirically that inflation disagreement raises real and nominal yields and their volatilities. Inflation disagreement is positively related to consumers’ cross-sectional consumption growth volatility and trading in fixed income securities. Calibrating our model to disagreement, inflation, and yields reproduces the economically significant impact of inflation disagreement on yield curves.

We show theoretically that optimism can lead a risk-averse Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to choose the first-best investment level that maximizes shareholder value. Optimism below (above) the interior optimum leads the CEO to underinvest (overinvest). Hence, if boards of directors act in the interests of shareholders, CEOs with relatively low or high optimism face a higher probability of forced turnover than moderately optimistic CEOs face. Using a large sample of turnovers, we find strong empirical support for this prediction. The results are consistent with the view that there is an interior optimum level of managerial optimism that maximizes firm value.