The asset pricing palette: Cash flows, returns and trading behavior

Asset pricing is the topic of the 2001 Eastern Finance Association Symposium and the five papers selected for this collection, which are summarized below, span a broad range of subjects that fall under the umbrella of the determinants of market prices. For example, the Schwartz and Moon article that introduces the symposium uses real options methodology to value firms whose cash flows are subject to multiple sources of uncertainty while the Luders and Peisl and Mixon analytical models that close the selections incorporate dual stochastic processes to derive relationships between information flow, trading volume and price volatility that are consistent with empirical evidence. In between, Mishra and O’Brien present new evidence on the important of index and factor selection when estimating the required return on equity and Spahr and Schwebach revisit the issue of time diversification by reintroducing a statistical construct from earlier times. Each of the works included here makes an important contribution to our understanding of the asset pricing process in a distinct area and opens new doors onto avenues for future research.