We present a theory of context-dependent choice in which a consumer’s attention is drawn to salient attributes of goods, such as quality or price. An attribute is salient for a good when it stands out among the good’s attributes, relative to that attribute’s average level in the choice set (or generally, the evoked set). Consumers attach disproportionately high weight to salient attributes and their choices are tilted toward goods with higher quality/price ratios. The model accounts for a variety of disparate evidence, including decoy effects, context-dependent willingness to pay, and large shifts in demand in response to price shocks.

We construct an index of long-term expected earnings growth for S&P 500 firms and show that it has remarkable power to jointly predict future errors in expectations and stock returns, in both the aggregate market and the cross section. The evidence supports a mechanism whereby good news causes investors to become too optimistic about long-term earnings growth. This leads to inflated stock prices and, as beliefs are systematically disappointed, subsequent low returns in the aggregate market. Overreaction of long-term expectations helps resolve major asset-pricing puzzles without time-series or cross-sectional variation in required returns.