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Agents with heterogeneous beliefs about fundamental growth do not share risks perfectly but instead speculate with each other on the relative accuracy of their models' predictions. They face the risk that market prices move more in line with the trading models of competing agents than with their own. Less risk-averse agents speculate more aggressively and demand higher risk premiums. My calibrated model generates countercyclical consumption volatility, earnings forecast dispersion, and cross-sectional consumption dispersion. With a risk aversion coefficient less than one, agents' speculation causes half the observed equity premium and lowers the riskless rate by about 1%. Copyright 2008 by The American Finance Association.

Investors' learning of the state of future real fundamentals from current inflation leads to macroeconomic state dependence of asset valuations and solvency ratios of firms within given rating categories. Since credit spreads are convex functions of solvency ratios, average spreads are higher than spreads at average solvency ratios. Macroeconomic shocks carry risk premiums so that expected default losses are more sensitive to changes in the price of risk than are credit spreads. By incorporating state dependence and increasing the price of risk, the econometrician obtains high credit spreads while maintaining average default losses at historical levels-the credit spreads puzzle.

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