Person:

Powers, Thomas

Asset pricers generally study the pricing of secondary market securities. Using a proprietary, project-level dataset on the film industry, I am able to study a cross-section of expected returns on real investments instead. One area in which we might expect differences is in the pricing of idiosyncratic risk. I find that expected returns are both increasing and concave in the idiosyncratic dollar variance of a film's payoff. Plotting expected returns against dollar volatility yields an approximately linear relationship, in which a $1 MM increase in volatility raises expected return by at least 43 basis points, up to as much as 116 basis points depending on the specification. I discuss several theories from corporate finance that can rationalize the pricing of idiosyncratic risk, and I build a matching model between studios and films in which costly external finance can explain both facts.

My first essay investigates the relationship between risk and return for investment projects within the firm. I focus on the film industry and find that more volatile movies have higher rates of return, even though this risk is entirely idiosyncratic. My second essay explains the high rates of return on commodity currencies in terms of the procyclicality of commodity prices. Commodity prices are procyclical because commodities are inputs, and thus demand for them is driven by the global business cycle. I also use labor market data to show that increases in labor costs during commodity booms contribute to the higher real exchange rates observed in commodity exporting countries. My final essay, co-authored with Jeffrey Frankel, studies optimal monetary policy in commodity-exporting economies facing a terms-of-trade shock. We build on the previous literature by introducing borrowing constraints, and find that currency depreciation during such a shock leads to higher welfare than either a fixed exchange rate or inflation targeting.