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This thesis presents three essays. The first chapter examines the information content of aggregate mutual fund alpha. Recent evidence shows that mutual funds collectively buy overvalued stocks. I hypothesize that aggregate alpha arises in part from such stocks becoming even more overvalued, and thus is a measure of market overvaluation. A one-standard-deviation increase in aggregate alpha corresponds to a 0.83 percentage point decrease in the following month's excess market return, and aggregate alpha yields a monthly out-of-sample R2 of 3.64%. Moreover, higher aggregate alpha predicts higher anomaly returns and lower aggregate earnings surprises. The market-return predictability stems from funds with high investment in overvalued stocks, and from small-cap or growth investment styles. The evidence is difficult to reconcile with rational explanations based on benchmarking, flow, or catering. The second chapter, joint with Justin Birru, tests a straightforward time-series prediction of sentiment; sentiment should exhibit its strongest effects on asset prices at times when valuations are most subjective. Consistent with this, we show that a one-standard-deviation increase in aggregate uncertainty amplifies the predictive ability of sentiment for market returns by two to four times relative to when uncertainty is at its mean. For the cross-section of returns, the predictive ability of sentiment for test assets expected to be most sensitive to sentiment and for anomalies is substantially larger in times of higher uncertainty. The final chapter, joint with Justin Birru and Hannes Mohrschladt, provides a unifying explanation for a number of existing risk puzzles. Systematic mispricing primarily affects speculative stocks and tends to take the form of overpricing, predicting lower average returns. Because speculative stocks are typically deemed risky by rational models, failing to control for exposure to systematic mispricing can bias tests of risk-return tradeoffs. Controlling for the effects of systematic mispricing, we recover robust positive risk-return relations for a large number of cross-sectional risk proxies, including many low-risk, distress, and illiquidity anomalies.

ESG (Environmental, social, and governance) investing is an investment philosophy to inform holistic and sound decision-making of investors for the purposes of both, nourishing a stable economy with acceptable rates of return while at the same time addressing stakeholders' non-financial concerns to preserve an inhabitable planet. Some scholars in finance argue that institutions subject to norms, i.e. responsible investors pay a financial cost from engaging in ESG activities. Moreover, they see ESG investing as distracting, inappropriate, risky and legally challenging. In response, several studies have emerged to show that ESG investing is a growing interest with investors, helps to mitigate financial risks, and does not need to represent a financial cost. Despite convincing evidence in a growing body of academic literature, many questions are still open to debate. Therefore, the principal objective of this thesis is to explore three dimensions of ESG investing, namely corporate environmental responsibility, renewable energy, and ESG disclosure quality. The research questions address issues relating to pension funds' investment decisions and legal obstacles resulting from utilising ESG information, financial return and risk implications of investing in renewable energy, substitutability of renewable energy for fossil fuel investments, and the effects of ESG disclosure quality on the expected cost of capital. To answer these questions, the thesis employs several standard and alternative empirical methods from the asset pricing and risk literatures. The thesis concludes the following. First, the integration of environmental responsibility into pension fund investment decision-making processes does not impede the financial and risk performance of pension funds. This means that pension funds should be allowed to consider such information in their investment decision making processes as the information does not reduce the overall financial return of the tested portfolios and does not violate trust law, i.e. the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Pension fund trustees have been prohibited to consider any non-financial criteria such as environmental, social, or governance criteria in their investment processes under trust law such as ERISA, when they could harm the finanical performance of the portfolio. To be more specific, a pension fund trustee breaches his fiduciary duties (the duty of loyalty and the duty of prudence), if he sacrifices the financial well-being of the pension fund for pursuing any other social goal (Langbein and Posner, 1980). In particular, the duty of loyalty is "... forbidding the trustee to invest for any object other than the highest return consistent with the preferred level of portfolio risk" (Langbein and Posner, 1980:98). Second, the thesis finds no evidence for sustained renewable energy equity premia. Furthermore, investments in renewable energy equity are considerably riskier than in fossil fuel energy equity, meaning that renewable energy firms are undergoing a period of high uncertainties related to their business model, low carbon prices, and lacking public and private infrastructure investment (Bohl et al., 2013; Kumar et al., 2012; Sadorsky, 2012b ). Finally, my thesis shows that companies with high ESG disclosure quality experience lower expected cost of equity and cost of debt financing, everything else equal.

This thesis provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between the value premium and financial distress. Measures of leverage and default are used as proxies for financial distress. Using both an international data set, 1991 to 2006 and a long time series data set for the United States, 1927 – 2007, the thesis adds knowledge about the role of the value premium in asset pricing theory. Generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic modelling (GARCH) is used and information gathered on the volatility of the value premium. A vector autoregressive (VAR) framework and Granger Causality tests are utilised in order to offer a deeper examination of the relationship between risk premium and economic activity. The results add further evidence to support the view that the value premium appears to be linked to variables associated with financial distress, although it is noted that this does not necessarily mean that participants in financial markets behave rationally.