Between 1934 and 1974, the Federal Reserve changed the initial margin requirement for the U.S. stock market 22 times. I use this variation to show that investors' leverage constraints affect the pricing of risk. Consistent with earlier theoretical predictions, I find that tighter leverage constraints result in a flatter relation between betas and expected returns. My results provide strong empirical support for the idea that the constraints investors face may help explain the empirical failure of the capital asset pricing model.

In this paper, we study a two-country general equilibrium model with partially segmented financial markets, where hedge funds emerge endogenously. Empirically, we show that the hedge fund investment strategy predicted by our model, which we call the "risk-adjusted carry trade" strategy, explains more than 16% of the overall hedge fund index returns and more than 33% of the fixed income arbitrage sub-index returns. The flow of new money to hedge funds affects market interest rates, exchange rates, and both the hedge funds' contemporaneous and expected future returns as predicted by the model.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract