The Cross Section of Expected Real Estate Returns: Insights from Investment-Based Asset Pricing

Motivated by investment-based asset pricing, we show that two firm fundamentals, investment and profitability, have substantial predictive power for REIT returns. The return predictability of investment and profitability is not subsumed by conventional models and can be useful for understanding the cross section of expected REIT returns. To illustrate, we construct an investment-based factor model for REITs that consists of a market factor, an investment factor, and a profitability factor. The investment-based model outperforms conventional models in capturing well-known cross-sectional patterns in REIT returns. Our findings suggest that incorporating investment-based asset pricing can be a promising direction for future real estate finance research.     

Conditioning Variables and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

Previous studies identify predetermined variables that predict stock and bond returns through time. This paper shows that loadings on the same variables provide significant cross-sectional explanatory power for stock portfolio returns. The loadings are significant given the three factors advocated by Fama and French (1993) and the four factors of Elton, Gruber, and Blake (1995). The explanatory power of the loadings on lagged variables is robust to various portfolio grouping procedures and other considerations. The results carry implications for risk analysis, performance measurement, cost-of-capital calculations, and other applications.     

Organization Capital and the Cross‐Section of Expected Returns

Organization capital is a production factor that is embodied in the firm's key talent and has an efficiency that is firm specific. Hence, both shareholders and key talent have a claim to its cash flows. We develop a model in which the outside option of the key talent determines the share of firm cash flows that accrue to shareholders. This outside option varies systematically and renders firms with high organization capital riskier from shareholders' perspective. We find that firms with more organization capital have average returns that are 4.6% higher than firms with less organization capital.     

Differences of Opinion and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

We provide evidence that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts earn lower future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is most pronounced in small stocks and stocks that have performed poorly over the past year. Interpreting dispersion in analysts' forecasts as a proxy for differences in opinion about a stock, we show that this evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that prices will reflect the optimistic view whenever investors with the lowest valuations do not trade. By contrast, our evidence is inconsistent with a view that dispersion in analysts' forecasts proxies for risk.     

Idiosyncratic Consumption Risk and the Cross Section of Asset Returns

This paper investigates the importance of idiosyncratic consumption risk for the cross‐sectional variation in asset returns. We find that besides the rate of aggregate consumption growth, the cross‐sectional variance of consumption growth is also a priced factor. This suggests that consumers are not fully insured against idiosyncratic consumption risk, and that asset returns reflect their attempts to reduce their exposure to this risk. The resulting two‐factor consumption‐based asset pricing model significantly outperforms the CAPM, and its performance compares favorably with that of the Fama–French three‐factor model.     

Analyst Forecasts and the Cross Section of European Stock Returns

We examine revisions to earnings forecasts by equity analysts and their role in predicting stock returns. We provide evidence that European stocks with net upward revised forecasts earn higher future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is not concentrated in small stocks, stocks with low analyst coverage, or stocks with low book‐to‐market ratios. We find differences in the return continuation patterns of stocks with upward versus downward revisions, namely, bad news travels quickly, but good news travels slowly. This result is consistent with investors' attaching greater significance to poor earnings forecasts, but adopting a wait‐and‐see approach to good news.     

Consumption, Dividends, and the Cross Section of Equity Returns

We show that aggregate consumption risks embodied in cash flows can account for the puzzling differences in risk premia across book‐to‐market, momentum, and size‐sorted portfolios. The dynamics of aggregate consumption and cash flow growth rates, modeled as a vector autoregression, are used to measure the consumption beta of discounted cash flows. Differences in these cash flow betas account for more than 60% of the cross‐sectional variation in risk premia. The market price for risk in cash flows is highly significant. We argue that cash flow risk is important for interpreting differences in risk compensation across assets.     

Expected Idiosyncratic Volatility Measures and Expected Returns

We find that idiosyncratic volatility forecasts using information available to traders at the time of the forecast are not related to expected returns. The positive relation documented in a number of other papers only exists when forward‐looking information is incorporated into the volatility estimate. That positive relation is driven by the realized idiosyncratic volatility component that cannot be forecasted by investors. Our findings are robust to several different empirical tests, volatility forecasting models and time periods.     

Earnings and Expected Returns

The aggregate dividend payout ratio forecasts excess returns on both stocks and corporate bonds in postwar U.S. data. High dividends forecast high returns. High earnings forecast low returns. The correlation of earnings with business conditions gives them predictive power for returns; they contain information about future returns that is not captured by other variables. Dividends and earnings contribute substantial explanatory power at short horizons. For forecasting long-horizon returns, however, only (scaled) stock prices matter. Forecasts of low long-horizon stock returns in the mid-1990s are caused not by earnings or dividends, but by high stock prices.     

Expected Option Returns

This paper examines expected option returns in the context of mainstream asset-pricing theory. Under mild assumptions, expected call returns exceed those of the underlying security and increase with the strike price. Likewise, expected put returns are below the risk-free rate and increase with the strike price. S&P index option returns consistently exhibit these characteristics. Under stronger assumptions, expected option returns vary linearly with option betas. However, zero-beta, at-the-money straddle positions produce average losses of approximately three percent per week. This suggests that some additional factor, such as systematic stochastic volatility, is priced in option returns.     

Good‐Specific Habit Formation and the Cross‐Section of Expected Returns

I study asset prices in a general equilibrium framework in which agents form habits over individual varieties of goods rather than over an aggregate consumption bundle. Goods are produced by monopolistically competitive firms whose elasticities of demand depend on consumers' habit formation. Firms that produce goods with a high habit level relative to consumption have low demand elasticities, set high prices for their product, have low expected returns on their stock, and have low asset pricing betas and stock return volatilities. I find supportive evidence for these predictions in the data.     

Cross‐Section of Expected Returns and Extreme Returns: The Role of Investor Attention and Risk Preferences

Previous work finds a negative and significant relation between the maximum daily return over the past one month and expected future stock returns. We determine that this effect is more pronounced for stocks that achieve their maximum daily returns toward the end of the month and stocks that are associated with capital losses show greater reversals. These results suggest the effect is related to investor attention and risk preferences.     

Expected versus Ex Post Profitability in the Cross‐Section of Industry Returns

Asset pricing theory predicts a positive cross‐sectional relation between expected profitability and expected returns. However, empirical studies typically use lagged ex post profitability as a proxy for expected profitability. In this article, we use out‐of‐sample combination forecasts to estimate expected industry‐level operating profit, gross profit, operating cash flow, and net income. We then construct real‐time industry‐rotation strategies based on high and low expected profitability. For each measure except gross profit, these predicted‐profitability strategies earn significant alpha net of transaction costs and outperform strategies based on ex post profitability.     

线上销售与未来股票收益

本文通过分析相关上市公司在电商平台的线上销售数据,发现线上销售增长可以预测未来股票收益。根据线上销售增长率构建投资组合可以获得月均1.27%的超额收益,经三因子、五因子模型调整后收益率分别为1.40%和1.35%,并且该超额收益在较长时间内不会逆转。横截面回归结果显示,线上销售增长与未来股票收益显著正相关,并在控制其他市场异象因子后仍然显著。此外,本文还发现线上销售数据的预测能力主要集中在投资者关注有限、线上销售占比高以及套利成本高的公司,其投资价值来源于对公司未来基本面信息的预测能力。进一步研究表明,同时利用线上销售指标和营业收入指标进行投资可以获得更高的超额收益。在考虑业绩预告和业绩快报对线上销售指标预测能力的潜在影响后,结果依然稳健。     

Consumption Fluctuations and Expected Returns

This paper introduces a novel consumption-based variable, cyclical consumption, and examines its predictive properties for stock returns. Future expected stock returns are high (low) when aggregate consumption falls (rises) relative to its trend and marginal utility from current consumption is high (low). We show that the empirical evidence ties consumption decisions of agents to time variation in returns in a manner consistent with asset pricing models based on external habit formation. The predictive power of cyclical consumption is not confined to bad times and subsumes the predictability of many popular forecasting variables.     

Information Uncertainty and Expected Returns

This study examines the role of information uncertainty (IU) in predicting cross-sectional stock returns. We define IU in terms of “value ambiguity,” or the precision with which firm value can be estimated by knowledgeable investors at reasonable cost. Using several different proxies for IU, we show that (1) on average, high-IU firms earn lower future returns (the “mean” effect), and (2) price and earnings momentum effects are much stronger among high-IU firms (the “interaction” effect). These findings are consistent with analytical models in which high IU exacerbates investor overconfidence and limits rational arbitrage.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Expected Returns and Habit Persistence

Using a consumption-based asset pricing model with infinite-horizonnonlinear habit formation, Campbell and Cochrane (1999) showthat low consumption in surplus of habit should forecast highexpected returns. This article argues that the finite-horizonlinear habit model also implies an inverse relation betweenexpected returns and surplus consumption. This article alsopresents empirical evidence, which indicates that expected returnson stocks and bonds vary with surplus consumption implied bythe habit models. The volatility of returns and the reward tovolatility are also related to surplus consumption. However,less than 30% of the predictable variation of expected returns,using standard lagged information variables, is attributed tosurplus consumption.     

Stock Returns,Expected Returns,and Real Activity

Measuring the total return variation explained by shocks to expected cash flows, time-varying expected returns, and shocks to expected returns is one way to judge the rationality of stock prices. Variables that proxy for expected returns and expected-return shocks capture 30% of the variance of annual NYSE value-weighted returns. Growth rates of production, used to proxy for shocks to expected cash flows, explain 43% of the return variance. Whether the combined explanatory power of the variables—about 58% of the variance of annual returns—is good or bad news about market efficiency is left for the reader to judge.     

Term Structure of Consumption Risk Premia in the Cross Section of Currency Returns

I relate the downward‐sloping term structure of currency carry returns to compensation for currency exposures to macroeconomic risk embedded in the joint dynamics of U.S. consumption, inflation, nominal interest rate, and their stochastic variance. The interest rate and inflation shocks play a prominent role. Higher yield currencies exhibit higher multiperiod exposures to these shocks. The prices of these risk exposures are positive and sizeable across all investment horizons. The interest rate shock is qualitatively similar to the long‐run risk of Bansal and Yaron.     

Portfolio Inefficiency and the Cross-section of Expected Returns

The Capital Asset Pricing Model implies that (i) the market portfolio is efficient and (ii) expected returns are linearly related to betas. Many do not view these implications as separate, since either implies the other, but we demonstrate that either can hold nearly perfectly while the other fails grossly. If the index portfolio is inefficient, then the coefficients and $R^2$ from an ordinary least squares regression of expected returns on betas can equal essentially any values and bear no relation to the index portfolio's mean-variance location. That location does determine the outcome of a mean-beta regression fitted by generalized least squares.