International asset returns and exchange rates

We present a consumption-based international asset-pricing model to study global equity premiums, the US riskfree rate and the cross section of international asset returns. The model entails idiosyncratic, country-specific consumption risk, which helps explain the magnitude of global equity premiums. It also features country-specific habit formation, which helps explain the level of the interest rate on the US short-term Treasury bills traded by domestic and international investors. We find that the model explains approximately 40–50% of the cross section of currency and equity premiums as well as expected returns from value and growth portfolios of at least a dozen countries. Changes in real exchange rates are responsible for explaining approximately half of the cross section of international asset returns.     

The effect of time-varying covariances on asset risk premia

In this article we examine an intertemporal capital asset pricing model (CAPM) that allows for time-varying conditional covariances that are assumed to follow a multivariate integrated generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (IGARCH) process. The resulting pricing equation includes idiosyncratic risk premia in addition to the usual market beta. Empirical analysis based on ten size and ten industry portfolios reveals significant idiosyncratic premia for most portfolios. Overall, we reject the static CAPM in favor of the intertemporal CAPM.     

Information,interest rates,and the volatility of asset prices

The volatility of an asset price is modelled as a function of the volatility of an information signal, real interest rates and inflation expectations. Volatility depends on the duration of cash flows, and the degree to which cash flows are indexed to real rates and inflation. The model is applied to determine asset betas, the volatility of the futures prices of assets and the volatility of equity prices.     

Production-based measures of risk for asset pricing

A stochastic discount factor for asset returns is recovered from equilibrium marginal rates of transformation inferred from producers’ first-order conditions. The marginal rate of transformation implies a novel macro-factor asset pricing model that does a reasonable job explaining the cross-sectional variation in average stock returns with plausible parameter values. Using a flexible representation of firms’ production technology, producers’ ability to transform output across states of nature is estimated to be high, in contrast with what is typically assumed in standard aggregate representations of firms’ production technology.     

Monotonicity in asset returns: New tests with applications to the term structure,the CAPM,and portfolio sorts

Many theories in finance imply monotonic patterns in expected returns and other financial variables. The liquidity preference hypothesis predicts higher expected returns for bonds with longer times to maturity; the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) implies higher expected returns for stocks with higher betas; and standard asset pricing models imply that the pricing kernel is declining in market returns. The full set of implications of monotonicity is generally not exploited in empirical work, however. This paper proposes new and simple ways to test for monotonicity in financial variables and compares the proposed tests with extant alternatives such as t-tests, Bonferroni bounds, and multivariate inequality tests through empirical applications and simulations.     

International tests of a five-factor asset pricing model

Average stock returns for North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific increase with the book-to-market ratio (B/M) and profitability and are negatively related to investment. For Japan, the relation between average returns and B/M is strong, but average returns show little relation to profitability or investment. A five-factor model that adds profitability and investment factors to the three-factor model of Fama and French (1993) largely absorbs the patterns in average returns. As in Fama and French, 2015, Fama and French, 2016, the model's prime problem is failure to capture fully the low average returns of small stocks whose returns behave like those of low profitability firms that invest aggressively.     

The behavior of risky asset prices in a symmetric least squares learning environment

This paper examines the dynamics of asset prices in a heterogeneous market. Traders are made up of learners who possess limited information and use limited models for predicting the future. The market also includes noise traders in the sense of Black, along with liquidity traders. Learners revise their prediction equations using least squares learning as defined by Marcet and Sargent. We derive the equilibrium price process and show how convergence is obtained. The price process is shown to have a number of interesting properties that are consistent with propositions outlined by Black. Numerical calculations for several examples illuminate how learning takes place in the model.     

Arbitrage violations and implied valuations: the option market

The ideas presented in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily reflect the views of the National bank of Canada. Both authors thank the National Bank of Canada and the SSHRC of Canada for their help. Thanks are also due to Professor Y. Tian for his comments, and for participating, together with students of the Financial Engineering program at York University, in the data preparation and the execution of the Matlab programs. In this paper, we propose a necessary and sufficient condition for bid and ask prices of European options to be free of arbitrage, and derive from it an efficient numerical methodology to determine its satisfaction by a given set of prices. If the bid and ask prices satisfy the no-arbitrage (NA) condition, our methodology produces a vector of NA prices that lie between the bid and ask prices. Otherwise, our methodology generates a vector of arbitrage-free prices that is as close as possible, in some sense, to the bid–ask strip. The arbitrage-free prices detected by our methodology render the commonly used practice of using mid-points and then ‘cleaning’ arbitrage from them as unnecessary. Moreover, a vector of ‘cleaned’ prices obtained from mid-point prices may be outside the bid–ask spread even in an arbitrage-free market and, hence, in this case will not be representative of the current market. A new procedure of estimating implied valuation operators is also suggested here. This procedure is rooted in the economic properties of put and call prices and is based on Phillips and Taylor's approximation of a convex function. This approach is superior to common estimation techniques in that it produces an analytical expression for the implied valuation operator and is not data intensive as some other studies. Empirical findings for the new methods are documented and their economic implications are discussed.     

The spirit of capitalism, asset pricing and growth in a small open economy

Conventional models of economic behavior have failed to account for a number of observed empirical regularities in macroeconomics and international economics. This may be due to preference specifications in conventional models. In this paper, we consider preferences with the “spirit of capitalism” (the desire to accumulate wealth as a way of acquiring status). We analyze a number of potential effects of international catching-up and the spirit of capitalism on savings, growth, portfolio allocation and asset pricing. Moreover, we obtain a multi-factor Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Our results show that status concerns have non-trivial effects on savings, growth, portfolio allocation, asset prices and the foreign exchange risk premium.     

Empirical analysis of the average asset correlation for real estate investment trusts

The credit risk capital requirements within the current Basel II Accord are based on the asymptotic single risk factor (ASRF) approach. The asset correlation parameter, defined as an obligor's sensitivity to the ASRF, is a key driver within this approach, and its average values for different types of obligors are to be set by regulators. Specifically, for commercial real estate (CRE) lending, the average asset correlations are to be determined using formulas for either income-producing real estate or high-volatility commercial real estate. In this paper, the value of this parameter was empirically examined using portfolios of U.S. publicly-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) as a proxy for CRE lending more generally. CRE lending as a whole was found to have the same calibrated average asset correlation as corporate lending, providing support for the recent U.S. regulatory decision to treat these two lending categories similarly for regulatory capital purposes. However, the calibrated values for CRE categories, such as multi-family residential or office lending, varied in important ways. The comparison of calibrated and regulatory values of the average asset correlations for these categories suggests that the current regulatory formulas generate parameter values that may be too high in most cases.     

Idiosyncratic momentum and the cross‐section of stock returns: Further evidence

In this article, we evaluate the profitability and economic source of the predictive power of the idiosyncratic momentum effect, by using five popular asset pricing models to construct the idiosyncratic momentum. We show that all five idiosyncratic momentum strategies produce similar return predictability and consistently outperform the conventional momentum strategy in the cross‐sectional pricing of equity portfolios and individual stocks. This positive effect of idiosyncratic momentum on returns is consistent with the investment capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Further analysis reveals that the firm‐level idiosyncratic momentum effect cannot extend to the aggregate stock market.     

Alternative Models for Estimating the Cost of Equity Capital for Property/Casualty Insurers

This paper estimates the cost of equity capital for Property/Casualty insurers by applying three alternative asset pricing models: the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT), and a unified CAPM/APT model (Wei (1988). The in-sample forecast ability of the models is evaluated by applying the mean squared error method, the Theil U2 (1966) statistic, and the Granger and Newbold (1978) conditional efficiency evaluation. Based on forecast evaluation procedures, the APT and Wei's unified CAPM/APT models perform better than the CAPM in estimating the cost of equity capital for the PC insurers and a combined forecast may outperform the individual forecasts.     

Constructing and Testing Alternative Versions of the Fama–French and Carhart Models in the UK

This paper constructs and tests alternative versions of the Fama–French and Carhart models for the UK market with the purpose of providing guidance for researchers interested in asset pricing and event studies. We conduct a comprehensive analysis of such models, forming risk factors using approaches advanced in the recent literature including value‐weighted factor components and various decompositions of the risk factors. We also test whether such factor models can at least explain the returns of large firms. We find that versions of the four‐factor model using decomposed and value‐weighted factor components are able to explain the cross‐section of returns in large firms or in portfolios without extreme momentum exposures. However, we do not find that risk factors are consistently and reliably priced.     

Risk and the cross section of stock returns

This paper mathematically transforms unobservable rational expectation equilibrium model parameters (information precision and supply uncertainty) into a single variable that is correlated with expected returns and that can be estimated with recently observed data. Our variable can be used to explain the cross section of returns in theoretical, numerical, and empirical analyses. Using Center for Research in Security Prices data, we show that a −1σ$-1\sigma$ to +1σ$+1\sigma$ change in our variable is associated with a 0.31% difference in average returns the following month (equaling 3.78% per annum). The results are statistically significant at the 1% level. Our results remain economically and statistically significant after controlling for stocks' market capitalizations, book-to-market ratios, liquidities, and the probabilities of information-based trading.     

Do self-control preferences help explain the puzzling behavior of asset prices?

In the context of a simple asset-pricing environment, we study the ability of self-control preferences to account for the stock-price volatility, risk-free-rate and equity-premium puzzles. Using a full-information estimation procedure, we estimate the presence of a quantitatively small self-control effect in the data. Moreover, with results obtained using CRRA preferences serving as a benchmark, we find that the adoption of self-control preferences makes only a marginal contribution towards a resolution of these puzzles.     

Bond pricing when the short-term interest rate follows a threshold process

This paper derives analytical solutions for arbitrage-free bond yields when the short-term interest rate follows an autoregressive process with the intercept switching endogenously. This process from the SETAR family is especially suited to capture the near-unit-root behaviour typically observed in the evolution of short-term interest rates. The derived yield functions, mapping the one-month rate into n-period yields, exhibit a convex/concave shape to the left and right of the threshold value, respectively, a pattern which is also found in US bond yield data. The longer the time to maturity, the more distinct the nonlinearity of the yield function becomes.     

Production and the Real Rate of Interest: A Sample Path Equilibrium

This paper examines a multiperiod production economy where investors do not observe the realizations of productivity factors or security expected returns. Unlike previous work, which expresses the equilibrium conditions as functions of unobservable (to both real-world investors and empiricists) moments of the distributions of returns, we express the equilibrium real rate as a function of the observable sample paths of realizations of returns. We provide a framework for empirically testing this and other asset pricing models without outside-the-model econometric assumptions needed for producing the unobservable moments of returns. We construct versions of the restrictions for any time interval between observations.     

Production and the Real Rate of Interest: A Sample Path Equilibrium

This paper examines a multiperiod production economy where investors do not observe the realizations of productivity factors or security expected returns. Unlike previous work, which expresses the equilibrium conditions as functions of unobservable (to both real-world investors and empiricists) moments of the distributions of returns, we express the equilibrium real rate as a function of the observable sample paths of realizations of returns. We provide a framework for empirically testing this and other asset pricing models without outside-the-model econometric assumptions needed for producing the unobservable moments of returns. We construct versions of the restrictions for any time interval between observations.     

Production and the Real Rate of Interest: A Sample Path Equilibrium

This paper examines a multiperiod production economy where investorsdo not observe the realizations of productivity factors or securityexpected returns. Unlike previous work, which expresses theequilibrium conditions as functions of unobservable (to bothreal-world investorsand empiricists) moments of the distributionsof returns, we express the equilibrium real rate asa functionof the observable sample paths of realizations of returns. Weprovide a framework for empirically testing this and other assetpricing models without outside-the-model econometric assumptionsneeded for producing the unobservable moments of returns. Weconstruct versions of the restrictions for any time intervalbetween observations. JEL codes: E43, G12, D92, D80, D51