Firm Characteristics, Cross-Sectional Regression Estimates, and Asset Pricing Tests

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Kirby

Abstract I test a number of well-known asset pricing models using regression-based managed portfolios that capture nonlinearity in the cross-sectional relation between firm characteristics and expected stock returns. Although the average portfolio returns point to substantial nonlinearity in the data, none of the asset pricing models successfully explain the estimated nonlinear effects. Indeed, the estimated expected returns produced by the models display almost no variation across portfolios. Because the tests soundly reject every model considered, it is apparent that nonlinearity in the relation between firm characteristics and expected stock returns poses a formidable challenge to asset pricing theory. (JEL G12, C58)

Author(s):  
Soohun Kim ◽  
Robert A Korajczyk ◽  
Andreas Neuhierl

Abstract We propose a new methodology for forming arbitrage portfolios that utilizes the information contained in firm characteristics for both abnormal returns and factor loadings. The methodology gives maximal weight to risk-based interpretations of characteristics’ predictive power before any attribution is made to abnormal returns. We apply the methodology to simulated economies and to a large panel of U.S. stock returns. The methodology works well in our simulation and when applied to stocks. Empirically, we find the arbitrage portfolio has (statistically and economically) significant alphas relative to several popular asset pricing models and annualized Sharpe ratios ranging from 1.31 to 1.66.


2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Márcio André Veras Machado ◽  
Otávio Ribeiro de Medeiros

This paper is aims to analyze whether a liquidity premium exists in the Brazilian stock market. As a second goal, we include liquidity as an extra risk factor in asset pricing models and test whether this factor is priced and whether stock returns were explained not only by systematic risk, as proposed by the CAPM, by Fama and French’s (1993) three-factor model, and by Carhart’s (1997) momentum-factor model, but also by liquidity, as suggested by Amihud and Mendelson (1986). To achieve this, we used stock portfolios and five measures of liquidity. Among the asset pricing models tested, the CAPM was the least capable of explaining returns. We found that the inclusion of size and book-to-market factors in the CAPM, a momentum factor in the three-factor model, and a liquidity factor in the four-factor model improve their explanatory power of portfolio returns. In addition, we found that the five-factor model is marginally superior to the other asset pricing models tested.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Neelangie Sulochana Nanayakkara ◽  
P. D. Nimal ◽  
Y. K. Weerakoon

Neoclassical asset pricing models try to explain cross sectional variation in stock returns. This study critically reviews the findings of empirical investigations on neoclassical asset pricing models in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), Sri Lanka. The study uses the structural empirical review (SER) methodology to capture a holistic view of empirical investigations carried out in the CSE from the year 1997 to 2017.The pioneering Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) (Sharpe, 1964; Lintner, 1965: Black, 1972) (SLB) states that market betas of stocks are sufficient to explain the cross sectional variation of stock returns. Alternatively there are multifactor models (Ross, 1976; Chen, 1986; Fama and French, 1993, 2015; Cahart, 1997) that state stock returns are driven by multiple risk factors. Similar to other markets the findings on the SLB model are not consistent in the CSE. The Fama and French (1993) and the Cahart (1997) models are supported in the CSE which is consistent with other markets, but the explanatory powers of them are substantially low in the Sri Lankan context. Contrasting the findings of a significant impact of macroeconomic factors on stock returns in developed markets, the impact of them in the CSE are temporary.The overall findings of the applicability of neoclassical asset pricing models in the CSE are inconsistent and inconclusive and the study identifies two reasons that may have contributed to such results. Firstly, it recognises that the inherent limitations of neoclassical asset pricing models may have affected the findings in the CSE. Secondly, it supports the argument that neoclassical models, as they are may not be applicable in emerging or frontier markets, thus they may need to be augmented with characteristics of such markets to make them more applicable.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 2180-2222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor DeMiguel ◽  
Alberto Martín-Utrera ◽  
Francisco J Nogales ◽  
Raman Uppal

Abstract We investigate how transaction costs change the number of characteristics that are jointly significant for an investor’s optimal portfolio and, hence, how they change the dimension of the cross-section of stock returns. We find that transaction costs increase the number of significant characteristics from 6 to 15. The explanation is that, as we show theoretically and empirically, combining characteristics reduces transaction costs because the trades in the underlying stocks required to rebalance different characteristics often cancel out. Thus, transaction costs provide an economic rationale for considering a larger number of characteristics than that in prominent asset-pricing models. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 394
Author(s):  
Adeel Nasir ◽  
Kanwal Iqbal Khan ◽  
Mário Nuno Mata ◽  
Pedro Neves Mata ◽  
Jéssica Nunes Martins

This study aims to apply value at risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES) as time-varying systematic and idiosyncratic risk factors to address the downside risk anomaly of various asset pricing models currently existing in the Pakistan stock exchange. The study analyses the significance of high minus low VaR and ES portfolios as a systematic risk factor in one factor, three-factor, and five-factor asset pricing model. Furthermore, the study introduced the six-factor model, deploying VaR and ES as the idiosyncratic risk factor. The theoretical and empirical alteration of traditional asset pricing models is the study’s contributions. This study reported a strong positive relationship of traditional market beta, value at risk, and expected shortfall. Market beta pertains its superiority in estimating the time-varying stock returns. Furthermore, value at risk and expected shortfall strengthen the effects of traditional beta impact on stock returns, signifying the proposed six-factor asset pricing model. Investment and profitability factors are redundant in conventional asset pricing models.


2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 709-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Ang ◽  
Jun Liu ◽  
Krista Schwarz

We examine the efficiency of using individual stocks or portfolios as base assets to test asset pricing models using cross-sectional data. The literature has argued that creating portfolios reduces idiosyncratic volatility and allows more precise estimates of factor loadings, and consequently risk premia. We show analytically and empirically that smaller standard errors of portfolio beta estimates do not lead to smaller standard errors of cross-sectional coefficient estimates. Factor risk premia standard errors are determined by the cross-sectional distributions of factor loadings and residual risk. Portfolios destroy information by shrinking the dispersion of betas, leading to larger standard errors.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 721
Author(s):  
Javier Rojo-Suárez ◽  
Ana Belén Alonso-Conde

Recent literature shows that many testing procedures used to evaluate asset pricing models result in spurious rejection probabilities. Model misspecification, the strong factor structure of test assets, or skewed test statistics largely explain this. In this paper we use the relative entropy of pricing kernels to provide an alternative framework for testing asset pricing models. Building on the fact that the law of one price guarantees the existence of a valid pricing kernel, we study the relationship between the mean-variance efficiency of a model’s factor-mimicking portfolio, as measured by the cross-sectional generalized least squares (GLS) R 2 statistic, and the relative entropy of the pricing kernel, as determined by the Kullback–Leibler divergence. In this regard, we suggest an entropy-based decomposition that accurately captures the divergence between the factor-mimicking portfolio and the minimum-variance pricing kernel resulting from the Hansen-Jagannathan bound. Our results show that, although GLS R 2 statistics and relative entropy are strongly correlated, the relative entropy approach allows us to explicitly decompose the explanatory power of the model into two components, namely, the relative entropy of the pricing kernel and that corresponding to its correlation with asset returns. This makes the relative entropy a versatile tool for designing robust tests in asset pricing.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (02) ◽  
pp. 1950012
Author(s):  
Thomas Gramespacher ◽  
Armin Bänziger

In two-pass regression-tests of asset-pricing models, cross-sectional correlations in the errors of the first-pass time-series regression lead to correlated measurement errors in the betas used as explanatory variables in the second-pass cross-sectional regression. The slope estimator of the second-pass regression is an estimate for the factor risk-premium and its significance is decisive for the validity of the pricing model. While it is well known that the slope estimator is downward biased in presence of uncorrelated measurement errors, we show in this paper that the correlations seen in empirical return data substantially suppress this bias. For the case of a single-factor model, we calculate the bias of the OLS slope estimator in the presence of correlated measurement errors with a first-order Taylor-approximation in the size of the errors. We show that the bias increases with the size of the errors, but decreases the more the errors are correlated. We illustrate and validate our result using a simulation approach based on empirical data commonly used in asset-pricing tests.


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