I find that aggregate asset growth constructed from bottom-up data negatively predicts future market returns both in and out-of-sample and this result is robust across G7 countries. I further show that aggregate asset growth contains information about future market returns not captured by traditional macroeconomic variables and other measures of investment or growth. The forecasting ability of asset growth is strongly correlated with its propensity to predict more optimistic analyst forecasts and subsequent downward revisions, earnings surprise, and systematic errors in investors’ expectations. The time-varying risk premium also appears key in explaining the documented return predictability.

We study repeated sequential games where players may not move simultaneously in stage games. We introduce the concept of effective minimax for sequential games and establish a Folk theorem for repeated sequential games. The Folk theorem asserts that any feasible payoff vector where every player receives more than his effective minimax value in a sequential stage game can be supported by a subgame perfect equilibrium in the corresponding repeated sequential game when players are sufficiently patient. The results of this paper generalize those of Wen (1994), and of Fudenberg and Maskin (1986). The model of repeated sequential games and the concept of effective minimax provide an alternative view to the Anti-Folk theorem of Lagunoff and Matsui (1997) for asynchronously repeated pure coordination games.

Stocks with increases in idiosyncratic risk tend to earn low subsequent returns for a few months. However, high idiosyncratic risk stocks eventually earn persistently high returns. These results are consistent with positively priced idiosyncratic risk and temporary underreaction to idiosyncratic risk innovations. Because risk levels and innovations are correlated, the relation between historical idiosyncratic risk and returns may reflect both risk premiums and underreaction and yield misleading inference regarding the price of risk. The results reconcile previous work offering conflicting evidence on the price of idiosyncratic risk and help to discriminate among explanations for the idiosyncratic risk-return relation.

Rubinstein's alternating-offers bargaining model is enriched by assuming that players' payoffs in disagreement periods are determined by a normal form game. It is shown that such a model can have multiple perfect equilibria, including inefficient ones, provided that players are sufficiently patient. Delay is possible even though there is perfect information and the players are fully rational. The length of delay depends only on the payoff structure of the disagreement game and not on the discount factor. Not all feasible and individually rational payoffs of the disagreement game can be supported as average disagreement payoffs. Indeed, some negotiation games have a unique perfect equilibrium with immediate agreement.

We examine the role of macroeconomic uncertainty in the cross section of corporate bonds and find a significant uncertainty premium for both investment-grade (IG) (0.40% per month) and non-investment-grade (NIG) (0.81% per month) bonds. The economic-uncertainty premium declines as we progressively remove downgraded bonds, indicating that the premium represents an increase in required returns for bonds with higher credit and macroeconomic risk. The economic-uncertainty premia vary across equities and bonds in a manner consistent with the heterogeneous risk-aversion levels of dominant players in equities (retail investors) versus bonds (institutional investors).

We provide time-series and cross-sectional evidence on the significance of a risk-return tradeoff in the bond and equity markets. We find a significantly positive intertemporal relation between expected return and risk in the bond market. We also propose novel measures of systematic and idiosyncratic risk for individual corporate bonds and find a significantly positive cross-sectional relation between systematic risk and expected bond returns, whereas there is no significant link between idiosyncratic risk and future bond returns. We provide an explanation for the significance of systematic (idiosyncratic) risk based on different investor preferences and informational frictions in the bond (equity) market.

Long-term reversals in corporate bonds are economically and statistically significant in a comprehensive sample spanning the period 1977 to 2017. Such reversals are stronger for bonds with high credit risk and more binding regulatory, capital, and funding liquidity constraints. Bond long-term reversal is not a manifestation of the equity counterpart and is mainly driven by long-term losers. A long-term reversal factor carries a sizable premium and is not explained by long-established equity and bond market factors. Thus, past returns capture investors’ ex-ante risk assessment and the degree of institutional constraints they face, so losing bonds command higher expected returns.

We find that firms experiencing improvements in crowdsourced employer ratings significantly outperform firms with declines. The return effect is concentrated among reviews from current employees, stronger among early firm reviews, and also stronger when the employee works in the headquarters state. Decomposing employer ratings, we find the return effect is related to changing employee assessments of Career Opportunities and views of senior management. It is unrelated to work-life balance. Employer rating changes are associated with growth in sales and profitability and help forecast one-quarter-ahead earnings announcement surprises. The evidence is consistent with employee reviews revealing fundamental information about the firm.