Using only the definition of returns, together with a transversality assumption, we demonstrate that given a dividend process, any one of three variables—expected return, return volatility, and the price–dividend ratio—completely determines the other two. By parameterizing only one of these processes, common empirical specifications place strong, and sometimes counter-factual, restrictions on the dynamics of the other variables. Our findings lend insight into the nature of the risk–return relation and the predictability of stock returns.

Convergence trades exploit temporary mispricing by simultaneously buying relatively underpriced assets and selling short relatively overpriced assets. This paper studies optimal convergence trades under both recurring and nonrecurring arbitrage opportunities represented by continuing and “stopped” cointegrated price processes and considers both fixed and stochastic (Poisson) horizons. Conventional long-short delta neutral strategies are generally suboptimal and it can be optimal to simultaneously go long (or short) in two mispriced assets. Optimal portfolio holdings critically depend on whether the risky asset position is liquidated when prices converge. Our theoretical results are illustrated on pairs of Chinese bank shares traded on both the Hong Kong and China stock exchanges.

Abstract We study the consumption-investment problem of an agent with a constant relative risk aversion preference function, who possesses noisy information about the future prospects of a stock. We also solve for the value of information to the agent in closed form. We find that information can significantly alter consumption and asset allocation decisions. For reasonable parameter ranges, information increases consumption in the vicinity of 25%. Information can shift the portfolio weight on a stock from 0% to around 70%. Thus, depending on the stock beta, the weight on the market portfolio can be considerably reduced with information, causing the appearance of underdiversification. The model indicates that stock holdings of informed agents are positively related to wealth, unrelated to systematic risk, and negatively related to idiosyncratic uncertainty. We also show that the dollar value of information to the agent depends linearly on his wealth and decreases with both the propensity to intermediate consumption and risk aversion.

Many firms have stockholders who face severe restrictions on their ability to sell their shares and diversify the risk of their personal wealth. We study the costs of these liquidity restrictions on stockholders using a continuous-time portfolio choice framework. These restrictions have major effects on the optimal investment and consumption strategies because of the need to hedge the illiquid stock position and smooth consumption in anticipation of the eventual lapse of the restrictions. These results provide a number of important insights about the effects of illiquidity in financial markets.

ABSTRACT While many studies document that the market risk premium is predictable and that betas are not constant, the dividend discount model ignores time‐varying risk premiums and betas. We develop a model to consistently value cashflows with changing risk‐free rates, predictable risk premiums, and conditional betas in the context of a conditional CAPM. Practical valuation is accomplished with an analytic term structure of discount rates, with different discount rates applied to expected cashflows at different horizons. Using constant discount rates can produce large misvaluations, which, in portfolio data, are mostly driven at short horizons by market risk premiums and at long horizons by time variation in risk‐free rates and factor loadings.

We examine the efficiency of using individual stocks or portfolios as base assets to test asset pricing models using cross-sectional data. The literature has argued that creating portfolios reduces idiosyncratic volatility and allows more precise estimates of factor loadings, and consequently risk premia. We show analytically and empirically that smaller standard errors of portfolio beta estimates do not lead to smaller standard errors of cross-sectional coefficient estimates. Factor risk premia standard errors are determined by the cross-sectional distributions of factor loadings and residual risk. Portfolios destroy information by shrinking the dispersion of betas, leading to larger standard errors.

We provide a formal treatment of both static and dynamic portfolio choice using the Disappointment Aversion preferences of Gul (1991. Econometrica 59(3), 667–686), which imply asymmetric aversion to gains versus losses. Our dynamic formulation nests the standard CRRA asset allocation problem as a special case. Using realistic data generating processes, we find reasonable equity portfolio allocations for disappointment averse investors with utility functions exhibiting low curvature. Moderate variation in parameters can robustly generate substantial cross-sectional variation in portfolio holdings, including optimal non-participation in the stock market.

This article studies the asset pricing implication of imprecise knowledge about rare events. Modeling rare events as jumps in the aggregate endowment, we explicitly solve the equilibrium asset prices in a pure-exchange economy with a representative agent who is averse not only to risk but also to model uncertainty with respect to rare events. The equilibrium equity premium has three components: the diffusive- and jump-risk premiums, both driven by risk aversion; and the ‘‘rare-event premium,’’ driven exclusively by uncertainty aversion. To disentangle the rare-event premiums from the standard risk-based premiums, we examine the equilibrium prices of options across moneyness or, equivalently, across varying sensitivities to rare events. We find that uncertainty aversion toward rare events plays an important role in explaining the pricing differentials among options across moneyness, particularly the prevalent ‘‘smirk’ ’ patterns documented in the index options market. Sometimes, the strangest things happen and the least expected occurs. In financial markets, the mere possibility of extreme events, no matter how unlikely, could have a profound impact. One such example is the so-called

ABSTRACT We examine how strategic trade affects expected returns in a large economy. In our model, both a monopolist (strategic) informed trader and uninformed traders consider the impact of their demands on prices. In contrast to settings with price-taking traders, private information never eliminates a priced risk, and can lead to higher risk premiums. Also unlike settings with price-taking informed traders, risk premiums decrease in response to an increase in liquidity-motivated trades in diversified portfolios. These differing effects arise because a privately informed strategic trader conceals her trades by taking small positions relative to the magnitude of noise trades. Although prices partially reveal her information and reduce uncertainty, a concomitant decrease in her risk absorption dominates and leads to higher risk premiums. Similar to settings with price-taking traders, private information affects expected returns only via factor loadings and risk premiums on existing payoff risks—it introduces no new priced risks, and factor loadings (betas) explain all cross-sectional differences in expected returns.