Local Risk,Local Factors,and Asset Prices

Firm location affects firm risk through local factor prices. We find more procyclical factor prices such as wages and real estate prices in areas with more cyclical economies, namely, high “local beta” areas. While procyclical wages provide a natural hedge against aggregate shocks and reduce firm risk, procyclical prices of real estate, which are part of firm assets, increase firm risk. We confirm that firms located in higher local beta areas have lower industry‐adjusted returns and conditional betas, and show that the effect is stronger among firms with low real estate holdings. A production‐based equilibrium model explains these empirical findings.     

ASYMMETRIC COVARIANCE,VOLATILITY, AND THE EFFECT OF NEWS

We propose that covariance (rather than beta) asymmetry provides a superior framework for examining issues related to changing risk premiums. Accordingly, we investigate whether the conditional covariance between stock and market returns is asymmetric in response to good and bad news. Our model of conditional covariance accommodates both the sign and magnitude of return innovations, and we find significant covariance asymmetry that can explain, at least in part, the volatility feedback of stock returns. Our findings are consistent across firm size, firm leverage, and temporal and cross‐sectional aggregations.     

Who works for startups? The relation between firm age,employee age,and growth

Young firms disproportionately employ and hire young workers. On average, young employees in young firms earn higher wages than young employees in older firms. Young employees disproportionately join young firms with greater innovation potential and that exhibit higher growth, conditional on survival. We argue that the skills, risk tolerance, and joint dynamics of young workers contribute to their disproportionate share of employment in young firms. Moreover, an increase in the supply of young workers is positively related to new firm creation in high-tech industries, supporting a causal link between the supply of young workers and new firm creation.     

Growth Opportunities,Technology Shocks,and Asset Prices

We explore the impact of investment‐specific technology (IST) shocks on the cross section of stock returns. Using a structural model, we show that IST shocks have a differential effect on the value of assets in place and the value of growth opportunities. This differential sensitivity to IST shocks has two main implications. First, firm risk premia depend on the contribution of growth opportunities to firm value. Second, firms with similar levels of growth opportunities comove with each other, giving rise to the value factor in stock returns and the failure of the conditional CAPM. Our empirical tests confirm the model's predictions.     

Asymmetric volatility and risk in equity markets

It appears that volatility in equity markets is asymmetric:returns and conditional volatility are negatively correlated.We provide a unified framework to simultaneously investigateasymmetric volatility at the firm and the market level and toexamine two potential explanations of the asymmetry: leverageeffects and volatility feedback. Our empirical application usesthe market portfolio and portfolios with different leverageconstructed from Nikkei 225 stocks. We reject the pure leveragemodel of Christie (1982) and find support for a volatility feedbackstory. Volatility feedback at the firm level is enhanced bystrong asymmetries in conditional covariances. Conditional betasdo not show significant asymmetries. We document the risk premiumimplications of these findings.     

Systemic risk,economic policy uncertainty and firm bankruptcies: Evidence from multivariate causal inference

The paper investigates causal relationships between systemic risk, economic policy uncertainty and firm bankruptcies, conditional on global volatility proxied by the VIX index, in a sample of 15 advanced and major emerging market economies during January 2008-June 2018. We test for Granger causality in time and frequency domains as well as dissect multivariate causal linkages in the dynamic complex system framework by applying a novel technique – convergent cross mapping (Sugihara et al., 2012). Based on strictly coincident results from all the three approaches, we find that systemic risk causes firm exit in Spain, while in the UK and the Netherlands bankruptcies are triggered by economic policy uncertainty. In South Korea and the USA, the VIX index causes the firm shutdown. For the rest of the countries, the causality inference provides less robust evidence. We argue that the magnitude of deleveraging by banks with respect to the private nonfinancial sector, proxied by the volatility of credit-to-GDP gaps, shapes the presence or absence of causal impact by systemic risk, economic policy uncertainty or the VIX index on bankruptcies.     

Multidimensional heterogeneity and the economic importance of risk and matching: evidence from contractual data and field experiments

We measure the cost of risk and the benefits of matching heterogeneous workers to risk levels within a firm that pays its workers piece rates. The workers of this firm are heterogeneous in two dimensions: risk preferences and ability. Our results suggest that workers’ willingness to pay to avoid risk is heterogeneous. It can attain 40% of their expected net earnings but averages to only 1%. Moreover, the benefits to the firm of matching are relatively small: profits are predicted to increase by only 2.3%, 4% if we restrict attention to cases where matching is possible. Although labor‐market sorting contributes to this result (the workers in this firm are relatively risk tolerant), it is not the primary cause. More important is the relative homogeneity of risk conditions in this firm that give rise to limited opportunities for matching.     

An Asymptotic Theory for Estimating Beta-Pricing Models Using Cross-Sectional Regression

Without the assumption of conditional homoskedasticity, a general asymptotic distribution theory for the two-stage cross-sectional regression method shows that the standard errors produced by the Fama–MacBeth procedure do not necessarily overstate the precision of the risk premium estimates. When factors are misspecified, estimators for risk premiums can be biased, and the t -value of a premium may converge to infinity in probability even when the true premium is zero. However, when a beta-pricing model is misspecified, the t -values for firm characteristics generally converge to infinity in probability, which supports the use of firm characteristics in cross-sectional regressions for detecting model misspecification.     

Size,time-varying beta,and conditional heteroscedasticity in UK stock returns

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between firm size and time-varying betas of UK stocks. We extend the Schwert and Seguin (1990)(Journal of Finance 45, 1120–1155) methodology by explicitly modeling conditional heteroscedasticity in the market model residual returns. Our results show that the time-varying coefficient is not statistically significant for both small and large firm stock indexes. We also find that accounting for GARCH effects in the Schwert-Seguin market model yields beta estimates that are markedly differently from those when conditional heteroscedasticity is ignored. Event studies that ignore conditional heteroscedasticity may bias the abnormal returns of small and large firms, thereby leading to a different conclusion regarding the significance of an information event.     

Search,product market competition and CEO pay

We develop a market equilibrium model to show how search frictions in the CEO market, agency conflicts and product market characteristics interact to affect CEO market tightness, firm size and CEO incentive pay. The theory generates novel implications that link firms' product markets with CEO markets. Different determinants of competition—the entry cost, product substitutability, and market size—have contrasting effects on CEO market tightness, CEO pay and firm size. We also derive new predictions for the impact of product market risk on firm size and CEO incentive compensation. We show empirical support for several cross-sectional hypotheses derived from the theory for how CEO pay, CEO incentives, firm size and market tightness vary with product market characteristics.     

Market skewness risk and the cross section of stock returns

The cross section of stock returns has substantial exposure to risk captured by higher moments of market returns. We estimate these moments from daily Standard & Poor's 500 index option data. The resulting time series of factors are genuinely conditional and forward-looking. Stocks with high exposure to innovations in implied market skewness exhibit low returns on average. The results are robust to various permutations of the empirical setup. The market skewness risk premium is statistically and economically significant and cannot be explained by other common risk factors such as the market excess return or the size, book-to-market, momentum, and market volatility factors, or by firm characteristics.     

Determinants of idiosyncratic volatility: Evidence from the Indian stock market

This paper investigates whether firm-specific characteristics explain idiosyncratic volatility in the stocks of non-financial firms traded in the Indian stock market. It employs the linear time series five-factor model, augmented with a liquidity factor and the conditional EGARCH model, to extract yearly idiosyncratic volatility. We estimate a panel data regression to quantify the relationship between firm-specific characteristics and the volatility of individual securities. The results show that idiosyncratic volatility is significant in emerging markets such as India, and that cross-sectional return variations of firms are associated with firm-specific characteristics such as firm size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, liquidity, cash flow-to-price ratio, and returns on assets. We find that the idiosyncratic risk documented in this study is associated with smaller size of company, higher liquidity, low momentum, high book-to-market ratio, and low cash flow-to-price ratio. The findings suggest need to develop alternative tools to make investment decisions in emerging markets.     

Time-varying moments, idiosyncratic risk, and an application to hot-issue IPO aftermarket returns

This paper proposes time-varying idiosyncratic risk as a component driving conditional abnormal returns and outlines a corresponding Engle et al. [Econometrica 55 (1987) 391] ARCH-M market model. An application is given to initial public offering (IPO) aftermarket stock returns, where a positive relation between idiosyncratic risk and returns is consistent with young issues’ equity as a contingent claim on firm assets. The empirical results for an illustrative sample of German Neuer Markt stocks traded during the first two years after initial listing indicate pronounced skewness as well as a positive relation between conditional idiosyncratic risk and expected returns. Conditioning aftermarket performance on risk yields much lower levels of abnormal return significance than a standard approach.     

Accruals and the Conditional Equity Premium

Accruals correlate closely with the determinants of the conditional equity premium at both the firm and the aggregate levels. The common component of firm‐level accruals, which cannot be diversified away by aggregation, explains the positive relation between aggregate accruals and future stock market returns. The residual component, which accounts for most variation in firm‐level accruals, is responsible for the negative cross‐sectional relation between firm‐level accruals and future stock returns. Consistent with the risk‐based explanation, aggregate accruals, as a proxy for the conditional equity premium, forecast changes in aggregate economic activity. Moreover, we document a similar comovement of earnings with the conditional equity premium at both the firm and the aggregate levels, which helps explain the negative relation between changes in aggregate earnings and contemporaneous market returns.     

Value versus Glamour

The fragility of the CAPM has led to a resurgence of research that frequently uses trading strategies based on sorting procedures to uncover relations between firm characteristics (such as “value” or “glamour”) and equity returns. We examine the propensity of these strategies to generate statistically and economically significant profits due to our familiarity with the data. Under plausible assumptions, data snooping can account for up to 50 percent of the in‐sample relations between firm characteristics and returns uncovered using single (one‐way) sorts. The biases can be much larger if we simultaneously condition returns on two (or more) characteristics.     

Life Insurer Cost of Equity with Asymmetric Risk Factors

This study presents an improved model for estimating life insurer cost of capital with the inclusion of upside and downside risk factors and controlling for life insurer characteristics. Although various asymmetric measures of market risk have been shown to be priced factors for the broader equity market, life insurer realized equity returns include a much larger premium for bearing downside risk, even after controlling for firm characteristics and other measures of risk. Cross‐sectional regression analysis finds a positive (negative) premium for downside (upside) betas, conditional on down and up markets, respectively. Coskewness and cokurtosis are also priced factors.     

On the conditional pricing effects of beta,size, and book-to-market equity in the Hong Kong market

Using Hong Kong equity stock data, this study examines empirically the pricing effects of beta, firm size, and book-to-market equity, but conditional on market situations, i.e. whether the market is up or down. Evidence supports the hypothesis that, if the risk variable is priced by the market, then there exists a systematic but conditional relation between the risk variable and average return, and this relation takes on opposite directions during up and down markets. However, the significance of the relations is often affected by the changing values of the risk variables as a result of changes in market conditions. Specifically, it is found that all three risk variables, namely beta, size, and book-to-market equity, exhibit conditional pricing effects. This is the first comprehensive study of its kind on Hong Kong market, which provides out-of-sample evidence relative to earlier tests on US data. The findings give important insights into capital market behaviour, which should prove useful in investment management and corporate financial decisions.     

Cephalon, Inc. Taking risk management theory seriously

Cephalon Inc., a biotech firm, bought call options on its own stock to meet its conditional cash flow needs. We analyze this decision by using the cash flow hedging concepts of Froot et al., (1993. Journal of Finance 5, 1629–1658). We identify the managerial analyses necessary to apply this theory and discuss managerial considerations absent from the theory. We find that managers consider deadweight costs of risk management, which theory tends to ignore. Theory provides little guidance in how to measure these and other deadweight costs. Finally, uncertainty about the availability of external financing and accounting considerations are critical considerations by managers.     

ON STOCK RETURN SEASONALITY AND CONDITIONAL HETEROSKEDASTICITY

We model the seasonal volatility of stock returns using GARCH specifications and size-sorted portfolios. Estimation results indicate that there are volatility differences between months and that these seasonal volatility patterns are conditional on firm size. Additionally, we find that seasonal volatility does not explain seasonal returns when the reward for risk is held constant over the sample period. Specifically, our results indicate that much of the abnormal return in January for small firms cannot be entirely attributed to either higher systematic risk or a higher risk premium in January.     

The Return of the Size Anomaly: Evidence from the German Stock Market

This paper examines the size effect in the German stock market and intends to address several unanswered issues on this widely known anomaly. Unlike recent evidence of a reversal of the size anomaly this study documents a conditional relation between size and returns. I also detect strong momentum across size portfolios. The results indicate that the marginal effect of firm size on stock returns is conditional on the firm's past performance. I use an instrumental variable estimation to address Berk's critique of a simultaneity bias in prior studies on the small firm effect and to investigate the economic rationale behind firm size as an explanatory variable for the variation in stock returns. The analysis in this paper indicates that firm size captures firm characteristic components in stock returns and that this regularity cannot be explained by differences in systematic risk.