We study the inflation implications for firms across the market power distribution

from an asset pricing perspective. Inflationary surprises are associated with

persistent declines in stock returns. We propose a new decomposition of the present

value identity of stock prices and show that investors expect nominal cashflows to

remain stagnant during periods of higher-than-expected inflation, a stagflationary

view of the world, on average, while a rising equity risk premium reduces stock

prices. Real yields do not increase in response to inflationary news, inconsistent

with a Taylor-rule type monetary policy-driven stock price response. Firms with a

large degree of market power are shielded from the negative returns following inflation

surprises, as market power firms are expected to generate a relative increase

in their nominal cashflows in response to inflation shocks. Changes in analysts’

firm-level earnings expectations around inflationary surprises confirm these results.

We examine a perplexing phenomenon wherein technological innovations induce short-term contractions, using a two-sector New-Keynesian model. Pivotal to explaining the evidence are sticky prices, which alter the cyclicality of relative prices, impacting production during innovative phases. The model addresses key asset-pricing questions: Why is there a negative link between investment returns and stock returns? Why do valuations surge post adverse labor-market events? Why do both high book-to-market and high gross-profits forecast future returns positively, despite their divergent ties to technology? Why is the slope of the equity yield term structure procyclical? The mechanism of innovation-led contractions serves as a unifying thread, weaving together previously isolated puzzles, while offering a novel perspective.

The literature has asserted that as few as four or five factor principal components (PCs) are sufficient to largely explain the cross-section of stock returns. By allowing for time variation in factor premia, we show that portfolios formed from factor PCs yield economically large out-of-sample Sharpe ratios that increase as up to forty PCs are employed. That is, non-latent time-varying factors have strong predictive power for the cross-section of stock returns, and to a substantial extent are not redundant of each other. Time variation in the number of economically relevant factors is related to changes in economic conditions and the diversity of firm characteristics, indicating roles for economic complexity and investor learning.