Asset pricing and foreign exchange risk

According to the International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM), the covariance of assets with foreign exchange currency returns should be a risk factor that must be priced when the purchasing power parity is violated. The goal of this study is to re-examine the relationship between stock returns and foreign exchange risk. The novelties of this work are: (a) a data set that makes use of daily observations for the measurement of the foreign exchange exposure and volatility of the sample firms and (b) data from a Eurozone country.The methodology we make use in reference to the estimation of the sensitivity of each stock to exchange rate movements is that it allows regressing stock returns against factors controlling for market risk, size, value, momentum, foreign exchange exposure and foreign exchange volatility. Stocks are then classified according to their foreign exchange sensitivity portfolios and the return of a hedge (zero-investment) portfolio is calculated. Next, the abnormal returns of the hedge portfolio are regressed against the return of the factors. Finally, we construct a foreign exchange risk factor in such manner as to obtain a monotonic relation between foreign exchange risk and expected returns.The empirical findings show that the foreign exchange risk is priced in the cross section of the German stock returns over the period 2000-2008. Furthermore, they show that the relationship between returns and foreign exchange sensitivity is nonlinear, but it takes an inverse U-shape and that foreign exchange sensitivity is larger for small size firms and value stocks.     

Asset pricing with heterogeneous beliefs

This paper studies the dynamic behavior of security prices in the presence of investors’ heterogeneous beliefs. We provide a tractable continuous-time pure-exchange model and highlight the mechanism through which investors’ differences of opinion enter into security prices. In the determination of equilibrium, we employ a representative investor with stochastic weights and solve for all economic quantities in closed form, including the perceived market prices of risk and interest rate. The basic analysis is generalized to incorporate multiple sources of risk, disagreement about nonfundamentals, and multiple investors. Other applications involving multiple goods and nominal asset pricing within monetary economies are discussed.     

A note on capital asset pricing and heterogeneous taxes

In this paper, we present a stylized model where we show how asset prices, i.e., required expected rates of returns, may be characterized in a world with heterogeneous asset taxes. Within a simple CAPM-like framework, we derive an after-tax beta equal to the pre-tax beta multiplied by a (non-obvious) asset specific tax adjustment. We further show in what sense the Security Market Line here can be replaced by a Security Market Fan. Well-known CAPM relations are obtained as special cases, and policy implications are analyzed.     

Asset pricing with partial-moments

I bridge the current pricing kernel framework with the early partial-moment pricing models of the beta framework, thereby reconciling and clarifying these bodies of literature. I argue for the inclusion of powers of min and max functions within a generalized kernel, and form a generalized beta model. Polynomial kernels and the kernel underpinning the partial-moment analogue of the Sharpe-Lintner CAPM are nested. I derive the partial-moment analogue to the Black CAPM, thus completing a theoretical parallelism, and compare the kernel-implied and canonical risk-neutral probabilities. A new model involving both lower and upper partial-moments, accommodating various kernel shapes present in the literature, is developed in the context of preference regularity conditions.     

Speculations in option markets enhance allocation efficiency with heterogeneous beliefs and learning

Many studies investigate the impact of heterogeneous beliefs in the first moment, while very few in the second moment. This is partially due to continuous-time setup which makes it difficult to incorporate heterogeneous beliefs in the second moment. In a two-period exponential–normal model with Bayesian learning, I demonstrate that heterogeneous prior variances give rise to the economic value of option markets. Investors speculate in option market and public information improves allocation efficiency of markets only when there is heterogeneity in prior variances. Heterogeneity in mean is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for generating speculations in option markets. With heterogeneous beliefs, options are non-redundant assets which can facilitate side-betting and enable investors to take advantage of the disagreements and the differences in confidence. This fact leads to a higher growth rate in the investors’ certainty equivalents and, thus, a higher equilibrium interest rate. Furthermore, option exhibits a unique feature of enabling signal precision to affect the ex ante risk premium of underlying asset, which quadratic derivative and stock do not have.     

Asset pricing with Second-Order Esscher Transforms

The purpose of the paper is to introduce, in a discrete-time no-arbitrage pricing context, a bridge between the historical and the risk-neutral state vector dynamics which is wider than the one implied by a classical exponential-affine stochastic discount factor (SDF) and to preserve, at the same time, the tractability and flexibility of the associated asset pricing model. This goal is achieved by introducing the notion of exponential-quadratic SDF or, equivalently, the notion of Second-Order Esscher Transform. The log-pricing kernel is specified as a quadratic function of the factor and the associated sources of risk are priced by means of possibly non-linear stochastic first-order and second-order risk-correction coefficients. Focusing on security market models, this approach is developed in the multivariate conditionally Gaussian framework and its usefulness is testified by the specification and calibration of what we name the Second-Order GARCH Option Pricing Model. The associated European Call option pricing formula generates a rich family of implied volatility smiles and skews able to match the typically observed ones.     

Asset pricing under quantile utility maximization

“Focus on the downside, and the upside will take care of itself” is a famous quote among professional investors. By considering an agent who follows this advice, we reproduce the first and second moments of stock returns, risk-free rate and consumption growth. The agent's behavior toward risk is analogous to a relative risk aversion of about 3 under expected utility, the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is about 0.5 and the time discount factor is below 1. In particular, the proposed model separates time and risk preferences in an innovative way.     

Asset pricing with unforeseen contingencies

We investigate an economy of heterogeneous agents that cannot specify all exogenous welfare-relevant events and consequently view the impact of unforeseen contingencies as utility shocks. In this setting we characterize an appropriate market equilibrium concept when securities can trade only on demand- and price-contingent events. We establish the existence of an equilibrium for a class of parametric models in which aggregating taste shocks across agents can lead to nonconsumption pricing factors. To fit the stylized facts, (i) non consumption factors must dominate the pricing kernel and contribute to the variation of the wealth-consumption ratio, (ii) markets must be incomplete and the set of claims that are traded endogenously determined, (iii) agents’ preferences with respect to unforeseen contingencies must be non-expected utility, and, (iv) although non-consumption pricing factors can be conditionally uncorrelated with aggregate consumption shocks, they must be correlated with shocks to expected consumption growth.     

Evaluation of linear asset pricing models by implied portfolio performance

We present a theoretical perspective that motivates the use of the Generalized Least Squares R-Square, prominently advocated by Lewellen et al. [Lewellen, J., Nagel, S., Shanken, J., forthcoming. A skeptical appraisal of asset-pricing tests. Journal of Financial Economics], as an evaluation measure for multivariate linear asset pricing models. Adapting results from Shanken [Shanken, J., 1985. Multivariate tests of the zero-beta CAPM. Journal of Financial Economics 14, 327–348] and Kandel and Stambaugh [Kandel, S., Stambaugh, R.F., 1995. Portfolio inefficiency and the cross-section of expected returns. Journal of Finance 50, 157–184], we provide various interpretations and a graphical account in mean-variance space of this measure, facilitating a better understanding of its properties. We furthermore relate it to another leading evaluation metric, the HJ-distance of Hansen and Jagannathan [Hansen, L.P., Jagannathan, R., 1997. Assessing specification errors in stochastic discount factor models. Journal of Finance 52, 557–590]. Additionally, we present a comparison between these evaluation measures using mean-variance mathematics in risk-return space, and we provide a simple formula for calculating both model evaluation measures that involves only the parameters of the mean-variance asset and factor frontiers.     

Hedge fund pricing and model uncertainty

This article uses Bayesian model averaging to study model uncertainty in hedge fund pricing. We show how to incorporate heteroscedasticity, thus, we develop a framework that jointly accounts for model uncertainty and heteroscedasticity. Relevant risk factors are identified and compared with those selected through standard model selection techniques. The analysis reveals that a model selection strategy that accounts for model uncertainty in hedge fund pricing regressions can be superior in estimation/inference. We explore potential impacts of our approach by analysing individual funds and show that they can be economically important.     

Asset pricing with heterogeneous preferences,beliefs, and portfolio constraints

Portfolio constraints are widespread and have significant effects on asset prices. This paper studies the effects of constraints in a dynamic economy populated by investors with different risk aversions and beliefs about the rate of economic growth. The paper provides a comparison of various constraints and conditions under which these constraints help match certain empirical facts about asset prices. Under these conditions, borrowing and short-sale constraints decrease stock return volatilities, whereas limited stock market participation constraints amplify them. Moreover, borrowing constraints generate spikes in interest rates and volatilities and have stronger effects on asset prices than short-sale constraints.     

Asset pricing: A tale of two days

We show that asset prices behave very differently on days when important macroeconomic news is scheduled for announcement. In addition to significantly higher average returns for risky assets on announcement days, return patterns are much easier to reconcile with standard asset pricing theories, both cross-sectionally and over time. On such days, stock market beta is strongly related to average returns. This positive relation holds for individual stocks, for various test portfolios, and even for bonds and currencies, suggesting that beta is after all an important measure of systematic risk. Furthermore, a robust risk–return trade-off exists on announcement days. Expected variance is positively related to future aggregated quarterly announcement day returns, but not to aggregated non-announcement day returns. We explore the implications of our findings in the context of various asset pricing models.     

Asset fire sales (and purchases) in equity markets

This paper examines institutional price pressure in equity markets by studying mutual fund transactions caused by capital flows from 1980 to 2004. Funds experiencing large outflows tend to decrease existing positions, which creates price pressure in the securities held in common by distressed funds. Similarly, the tendency among funds experiencing large inflows to expand existing positions creates positive price pressure in overlapping holdings. Investors who trade against constrained mutual funds earn significant returns for providing liquidity. In addition, future flow-driven transactions are predictable, creating an incentive to front-run the anticipated forced trades by funds experiencing extreme capital flows.     

Asset pricing with a reference level of consumption: New evidence from the cross-section of stock returns

This paper presents an empirical evaluation of recently proposed asset pricing models which extend the standard preference specification by a reference level of consumption. We motivate an alternative model that accounts for the return on human capital as a determinant of the reference level. Our analysis is based on a broad cross-section of test assets, which provides a level playing field for a comparison to established benchmark models. The reference level model extended by human capital does a good job in explaining size and value premia. Estimated on Fama and French's size and book-to-market sorted portfolios, it outperforms Lettau and Ludvigson's scaled CCAPM and delivers average pricing errors comparable to the Fama-French three-factor model.     

The pricing and performance of leveraged exchange-traded funds

Leveraged ETFs are a recent and very successful financial innovation. They provide daily returns that are in a multiple or a negative multiple of the daily returns on a market benchmark. In this paper, we examine the characteristics, trading statistics, pricing efficiency and tracking errors of a sample of leveraged ETFs. We find that these ETFs are traded mainly by retail traders with very short holding periods. Price deviations (from NAV) are small on average, but large premiums and discounts are prone to occur. More interestingly, the behavior of premiums is different between bull (i.e., those with a positive multiple) and bear ETFs (i.e., those with a negative multiple). Our findings are consistent with the argument that the end-of-day rebalancing of the funds’ exposures increases market volatility at the close of a trading day. As for tracking errors, they are small for holding periods of up to a week, but become increasingly larger for longer horizons.     

International asset pricing under segmentation and PPP deviations

We analyze the impact of both purchasing power parity (PPP) deviations and market segmentation on asset pricing and investor's portfolio holdings. The freely traded securities command a world market risk premium and an inflation risk premium. The securities that can be held by only a subset of investors command two additional premiums: a conditional market risk premium and a segflation risk premium. Our model is empirically supported with important implications for tests of international asset pricing.     

The performance of cross-sectional regression tests of the CAPM with non-zero pricing errors

We show that in the presence of non-zero pricing errors, the Fama–MacBeth (FM) cross-sectional regression test is very likely to either reject the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) when it (almost) holds or accept the model when it grossly fails. We investigate the case when pricing errors are correlated with betas and demonstrate that the test performance depends crucially on the correlation, cross-sectional distribution of betas, and several other parameter values. Even when the CAPM holds exactly (pricing errors are zero) the FM test is equally likely to either reject or accept the model when typical sample sizes are used.     

Using industry momentum to improve portfolio performance

Minimum-variance portfolios, which ignore the mean and focus on the (co)variances of asset returns, outperform mean–variance approaches in out-of-sample tests. Despite these promising results, minimum-variance policies fail to deliver a superior performance compared with the simple 1/N rule. In this paper, we propose a parametric portfolio policy that uses industry return momentum to improve portfolio performance. Our portfolio policies outperform a broad selection of established portfolio strategies in terms of Sharpe ratio and certainty equivalent returns. The proposed policies are particularly suitable for investors because portfolio turnover is only moderately increased compared to standard minimum-variance portfolios.     

Dispersion in beliefs among active mutual funds and the cross-section of stock returns

We propose a measure of dispersion in fund managers? beliefs about future stock returns based on their active holdings, i.e., deviations from benchmarks. We find that both the level of and the change in dispersion positively predict subsequent stock returns on a risk-adjusted basis. This effect is particularly pronounced among stocks with high information asymmetry and binding short-sale constraints. These results suggest that a subgroup of informed managers drives up the dispersion in active holdings when they place large bets after receiving positive private information. Binding short-sale constraints, however, prevent them from fully using their negative private information, leading to low dispersion in active holdings.     

Fixed-income fund performance: Role of luck and ability in tail membership

The risk-adjusted performance (alphas) of a comprehensive and survivorship-free sample of Canadian bond funds after (before) management-related costs is negative (positive) and is weakly sensitive to the choice of the return-generating process. A conditional multi-factor model that captures maturity differences and default risk best describes the return-generating process of these funds. Examination of funds in the tails of the performance distribution using the block-bootstrap method suggests that “bad luck” causes the before costs underperformance of extreme left-tail funds and no fund possesses truly superior management skills.