Asset Pricing

The NBER’s Asset Pricing Program was created in 1991. Today, it has more than 130 members who present and discuss their research findings at three annual meetings. These meetings take place in the Midwest in the spring, on the east coast in the summer, and on the west coast in the fall. It has been my honor to serve as Program Director for the past three years, which have been particularly interesting as the financial crisis has challenged some of the conventional wisdom about the workings of asset markets. During this time, the Program’s members have produced an impressive collection of more than 300 NBER Working Papers. This report focuses specifically on quantitative structural asset pricing models. In recent years, the AP members have been researching models that can provide unified explanations of a wide range of phenomena in financial markets. Even before the financial crisis, some of these models provided an important base for understanding financial institutions, frictions in financial markets (such as credit constraints), liquidity, investor heterogeneity, and the potential presence of investor irrationality in some markets. Of course, since the crisis, AP Program members have intensified their analysis of models with such features.