The term structure of equity returns is downward-sloping: stocks with high cash flow duration earn 1.10% per month lower returns than short-duration stocks in the cross-section. I create a measure of cash flow duration at the firm level using balance sheet data to show this novel fact. Factor models can explain only 50% of the return differential, and the difference in returns is three times larger after periods of high investor sentiment. Analysts extrapolate from past earnings growth into the future and predict high returns for high-duration stocks following high-sentiment periods, contrary to ex-post realizations. I use institutional ownership as a proxy for short-sale constraints, and find the negative cross-sectional relationship between cash flow duration and returns is only contained within short-sale constrained stocks.

We study how investors respond to inflation combining a customized survey experiment with trading data at a time of historically high inflation. Investors’ beliefs about the stock return–inflation relation are very heterogeneous in the cross section and on average too optimistic. Moreover, many investors appear unaware of inflation-hedging strategies despite being otherwise well-informed about prevailing inflation rates and asset returns. Consequently, whereas exogenous shifts in inflation expectations do not impact return expectations, information on past returns during periods of high inflation leads to negative updating about the perceived stock-return impact of inflation, which feeds into return expectations and subsequent actual trading behavior.

The anomaly zoo has caused many to question whether researchers are using the right tests of statistical significance. But even if researchers are using the right tests, they will still draw the wrong conclusions from their econometric analyses if they start out with the wrong priors (i.e., if they start out with incorrect beliefs about the ex ante probability of encountering a tradable anomaly, the “anomaly base rate”). We propose a way to estimate it by combining two key insights: Empirical Bayes methods capture the implicit process by which researchers form priors about the likelihood that a new variable is a tradable anomaly based on their past experience, and under certain conditions, a one-to-one mapping exists between these prior beliefs and the best-fit tuning parameter in a penalized regression. The anomaly base rate varies substantially over time, and we study trading-strategy performance to verify our estimation results.

The downside risk capital asset pricing model (DR-CAPM) can price the cross section of currency returns. The market-beta differential between high and low interest rate currencies is higher conditional on bad market returns, when the market price of risk is also high, than it is conditional on good market returns. Correctly accounting for this variation is crucial for the empirical performance of the model. The DR-CAPM can jointly rationalize the cross section of equity, equity index options, commodity, sovereign bond and currency returns, thus offering a unified risk view of these asset classes. In contrast, popular models that have been developed for a specific asset class fail to jointly price other asset classes.

We isolate the information channel of peer effects in consumption in a setting that excludes a role for common shocks or social pressure—a spending panel paired with crowdsourced information about anonymous “peers” elicited at different times. Consumers converge to peers’ spending, and more so when peer signals are more informative. Convergence is asymmetric: within 12 months of information provision, overspenders close 17% and underspenders 5% of their gap relative to peers. We exploit the quasi-random assignment to peer groups in an instrumental-variable strategy and implement an experiment for external validity. Our results are consistent with information-based theories of overconsumption.

Contrary to signaling models’ central predictions, changes in the level of cash flows do not empirically follow changes in dividends. We use the Campbell (1991) decomposition to construct cash-flow and discount-rate news from returns and find the following: (1) both dividend changes and repurchase announcements signal changes in cash-flow volatility (in opposite directions); (2) larger cash-flow volatility changes come with larger announcement returns; and (3) neither discount-rate news, nor the level of cash-flow news, nor total stock return volatility change following dividend changes. We conclude cash-flow news—and not discount-rate news—drive payout policy, and payout policy conveys information about future cash-flow volatility.

The frequency with which firms adjust output prices helps explain persistent differences in capital structure across firms. Unconditionally, the most flexible-price firms have a 19% higher long-term leverage ratio than the most sticky-price firms, controlling for known determinants of capital structure. Sticky-price firms increased leverage more than flexible-price firms following the staggered implementation of bank deregulation across states and over time, which we use in a difference-in-differences strategy. Firms’ frequency of price adjustment did not change around the deregulation.