Empirical tests on the asset pricing model with liquidity risk: An unobserved components approach

The aim of this paper is to test empirically the conditional liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model (L-CAPM) developed by Acharya and Pedersen (2005). Accordingly, we propose to estimate the L-CAPM using unobserved components methodology, which allows us to take into account the main stylized facts characterizing liquidity. Based on a sample of firms listed on the NASDAQ, our empirical analysis reveals several findings. Firstly, we show that liquidity is time-varying and exhibits strong seasonality. Secondly, we highlight the impact of the liquidity level premium on asset prices. Thirdly, we show that the most important liquidity risk is related to the covariance between portfolio illiquidity and market returns. Fourthly, we observe a negative relationship between portfolio returns and market illiquidity. Fifthly, we find that liquidity risk and illiquidity level are not always positively correlated.     

Cash-flow news,market liquidity and liquidity risk

This article adopts Campbell's (1991) return decomposition model to decompose the unexpected stock return and unexpected excess stock return in the US stock market. The study also investigates the factors that cause the shock to stock return and excess stock return. We further examine the responses of stock market to cash-flow news, expected stock return news, expected excess stock return news and interest rate news. Last, we examine the reaction of market liquidity, liquidity risk and abnormal trading volume to cash-flow news, expected stock return news, expected excess stock return news and interest rate news. Our main findings are summarized as follows: first, cash-flow news is the main driver of stock return and excess stock return in stock market. Second, the dividend payout ratio is able to predict stock return and excess stock return. Third, under the model of stock return variance, unexpected market liquidity and unexpected liquidity risk are negatively related to expected stock return news, but not related to cash-flow news. Fourth, under the model of excess stock return variance, unexpected market liquidity and unexpected liquidity risk are negatively related to cash-flow news, expected excess stock return news, and interest rate news.     

流动性、股票定价及时变性：来自我国沪深股市的经验证据

本文在经流动性风险调整的资产定价模型的基础上,通过引进四个工具变量,构建了一个检验模型,于时间序列上对中国股票市场进行了实证分析。实证结果显示：我国的股市流动性单位风险溢价于时间序列上存在显著的时变性。从而证实了投资者之内生流动性风险对股票收益率之影响效应,进而揭示了一个货币供给量影响股市的一个作用机制,即股票价格的涨跌由于流动性水平的不同和由前者导致的流动性风险溢价要求的不同而受到影响。     

Drivers of expected returns in Istanbul stock exchange: Fama–French factors and coskewness

We investigate the impact of coskewness on the variation of portfolio excess returns in Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) over the period July 1999 to December 2005. We form portfolios according to size, industry, size and book-to-market ratio, momentum and coskewness and compare alternative asset pricing models. The traditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the three-factor model of Fama and French are tested in the multivariate testing procedure of Gibbons–Ross–Shanken (1989). Coskewness is introduced as a fourth factor and its incremental effect over CAPM and Fama–French factors is examined both in multivariate tests and in cross-sectional regressions. The findings reveal that coskewness is able to explain the size premium in ISE. Hence, the basic two-moment CAPM without the coskewness factor would underestimate the expected return of size portfolios. Multivariate test results indicate that coskewness reduces the pricing bias, albeit insignificantly. Cross-sectional analysis uncovers that coskewness has a significant additional explanatory power over CAPM, especially for size and industry portfolios. However, coskewness does not have a significant incremental explanatory power over Fama–French factors in ISE.     

How time horizons and arbitrage cost influence the turnover premium?

There are multiple theories for the causal relation between stock turnover and expected return. The risk theory argues that stocks with high turnover generally have high information uncertainty, and thus high subsequent returns are required to compensate for the increased risk. By contrast, the theory of heterogeneous beliefs considers that high-turnover stocks have high speculative values and tend to be overpriced. We find that the information contained in stock turnover is multidimensional and controlling time horizons and arbitrage cost contributes to the reconciliation of the theories of risk compensation and heterogeneous beliefs. Our result shows that expected return is positively correlated with short-term turnover, and negatively correlated with long-term one. The premium on short-term turnover is consistent with the explanations based on transaction cost and liquidity risk. The premium on long-term turnover is much more pronounced among stocks with high arbitrage cost and can be largely explained by the mispricing theory and heterogeneous beliefs.     

Asset return dynamics and the FX risk premium in a decentralized dealer market

The paper proposes a continuous time model of an FX market organized as a multiple dealership. The dealers have costly access to best available quotes. They interpret signals from the joint dealer-customer order flow and decide upon their own quotes and trades in the inter-dealer market. Each dealer uses the observed order flow to improve the subjective estimates of relevant aggregate variables, which are the sources of uncertainty. The risk factors are returns on domestic and foreign assets and the size of the cross-border dealer transactions in the FX market. These uncertainties have diffusion form and are dealt with according to the principles of portfolio optimization in continuous time. The model is used to explain the country, or risk, premium in the uncovered national return parity equation for the exchange rate. The two country premium terms that I identify in excess of the usual covariance term (consequence of the “Jensen inequality effect”) are: the dealer heterogeneity-induced inter-dealer market order flow component and the dealer Bayesian learning component. As a result, an “order flow-adjusted total return parity” formula links the excess FX return to both the “fundamental” factors represented by the differential of the national asset returns, and the microstructural factors represented by heterogeneous dealer knowledge of the aggregate order flow and the fundamentals.     

A portfolio approach to climate investments: CAPM and endogenous risk

Is there a role for investments in climate change mitigation despite low expected return? We use a model of intertemporal expected utility maximisation to analyse this question. Similar to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) the rate of return depends on the correlation of risk between the return on investments in climate change mitigation and the market portfolio, but in contrast to the classical CAPM we admit the fact that economic and environmental systems are jointly determined, implying that environmental risk is endogenous. Therefore, investments in climate change mitigation may reduce risk via self-protection and self-insurance. If risk reduction is accounted for in cost–benefit evaluations, climate investments may be justified despite low expected return. These aspects of climate investments are not, however, communicated via standard cost–benefit analyses of climate policy. Optimal climate policy may therefore be more ambitious than previously considered.     

Single Beta Models and Currency Futures Prices

The conditional capital asset pricing model is applied to foreign currency futures prices, covariance risk being measured relative to excess returns from a broadly diversified international portfolio of equities. Positive time-varying risk premia are found in all five currencies tested when the difference between the US and the average foreign interest rates is used as an instrumental variable for the expected excess return from the common stock portfolio.     

Robustness of the market model

Summary The market model specifies that the random vector of returns on risky assets is an affine function of the return on the market portfolio plus a residual which has zero conditional expectation given the return on the market. The model is important because of its intimate relation to distributional two-fund separation and the CAPM equation. This paper shows that the market model is robust to small changes in the asset supplies only if the distribution of returns is spherically generated.     

How strong is the global integration of emerging market regions? An empirical assessment

This paper attempts to evaluate the time-varying integration of emerging markets from a regional perspective based on a conditional version of the International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) with DCC-GARCH parameters that allows for dynamic changes in the degree of market integration, global market risk premium, regional exchange-rate risk premium, and local market risk premium. Our findings reveal several interesting facts. First, the time-varying degree of integration of four emerging regions under consideration, satisfactorily explained by the regional level of trade openness and the term premium of US interest rates, has recently tended to increase, but these markets still remain substantially segmented from the world market. Second, the local market risk premium is found to explain more than 50% of the total risk premium for emerging market returns. Finally, we show that conditional correlations usually underestimate and overstate the measure of time-varying market integration. The empirical results of this study have some important implications for both global investors and policymakers with respect to dedicated portfolio investments in emerging markets and policy adjustments.     

Liquidity shocks and equilibrium liquidity premia

We study an equilibrium in which agents face surprise liquidity shocks and invest in liquid and illiquid riskless assets. The random holding horizon from liquidity shocks makes the return of the illiquid security risky. The equilibrium premium for such risk depends on the constraint that agents face when borrowing against future income; it is insignificant without borrowing constraint, but can be very high with borrowing constraint. Illiquidity, therefore, can have large effects on asset returns when agents face liquidity shocks and borrowing constraints. This result can help us understand why some securities have high liquidity premia, despite low turnover frequency.     

基于风险基金的资本资产定价模型

本文提出并证明了基于风险基金的CAPM模型。基于风险基金的CAPM模型描述了资产的收益与风险之间的线性关系 ,其中资产的风险定义为资产收益率与风险基金收益率的协方差除以风险基金收益率的方差。作为应用例子 ,本文使用基于风险基金的CAPM模型证明了著名的CCAPM模型。     

The effect of the liberalization of the Chinese stock market on returns

We examine the short-term effects of the liberalization of the Chinese stock market on returns. We find a positive and significant abnormal return associated with the announcement of the liberalization of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Exploiting features of the reform, we are able to compare stocks directly and indirectly affected by the liberalization. We find that all stock prices reflect this announcement premium equally, suggesting that the premium does not reflect an increase in expected liquidity. We further find that observed liquidity, as measured by volume and price impact, did not increase following the liberalization. We conclude that the observed premium reflects a diversification benefit for Chinese investors.     

Variance and lower partial moment betas as bases for costing equity capital among regulated utilities

An important question in the setting of public utility rates is, ‘What constitutes a fair rate of return or cost of equity capital for a regulated utility?’ Recent debates over this issue have centred on the CAPM's ability to produce realistic equity cost figures for use in the rate-setting process. Several researchers recommend modified or expanded versions of the market model as a means of improving its predictive capabilities. One such approach is the lower partial moment model. The purpose of the present paper is to assess the robustness of the lower partial moment model relative to the conventional CAPM as a basis for estimating the cost of a utility company's equity capital. The hypothesis that empirical estimates of the LPM beta tend to overestimate the true systematic risk of utility companies was corroborated by our test results.     

A characterization of the coskewness–cokurtosis pricing model

The coskewness–cokurtosis pricing model is equivalent to absence of any positive-alpha return for which the residual risk has positive coskewness and negative cokurtosis with the market. This parallels the CAPM and also the fundamental theorem of asset pricing.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF BETAS IN PRESENCE OF NONTRADED ASSETS

This study considers a capital assets pricing model (CAPM) in an incomplete financial market wherein not all risky assets are traded and the risk from non‐traded assets is not orthogonal to that of the existing or traded assets. The model shows the extent of the divergence of the CAPM betas (true betas) from the traditional CAPM betas (perceived betas) in market equilibrium conditions in an incomplete market. Specifically, it implies that the more incomplete a financial market is, the wider is the discrepancy between the true and perceived betas, and the distribution of the perceived betas tends to centre more around 1 in an incomplete market than that of true betas. Empirical evidence in various settings support these results.     

过度自信、有限参与和资产价格泡沫

当存在模型不确定性且有限市场参与内生时,过度自信的投资者和理性投资者参与股票市场的程度有着不同的行为模式。本文给出的模型分析了两种投资者在不同情况下对股票市场的参与情况,借此解释有限市场参与、超额进入和资产定价之间的关系。模型在流动性溢价、投资者结构和风险溢价的关系等方面具有明显的实证含义。模型表明,理性投资者有更大的投资区域,但是非理性投资者在其投资区域内更为激进。进而,在不同情形下,模型给出了资产均衡价格与投资者结构之间对应关系。     

Liquidity shocks: A new solution to the forward premium puzzle

The frequent empirical failure of uncovered interest rate parity raises a question that has not been definitively answered: why do predictable excess returns on currencies persist in competitive currency markets? Supported by data from nine major currencies for 1978:08–2019:09, I provide a novel resolution to this enduring forward premium puzzle by building on the financial economics literature that explores the economic implications of limited access to capital markets. A liquidity shock, or the urgent demand for liquidity by credit-constrained arbitragers liquidating bond holdings, causes losses from sudden drops in bond prices. Arbitragers require a liquidity premium to compensate for potential losses that vary directly with the interest rate. It is this liquidity premium that explains persistent excess returns on currencies. I argue for policies favoring a low interest rate environment and macroprudential controls that ease liquidity constraints to increase the efficiency of international capital markets by reducing the liquidity premium.     

Do financial distress and liquidity crises affect value and size premiums?

This study investigates the impact of liquidity crises on the relationship between stock (value and size) premiums and default risk in the US market. It first examines whether financial distress can explain value and size premiums, and then, subsequently, aims to determine whether liquidity crises increase the risk of value and size premium investment strategies. The study employs a time-varying approach and a sample of US stock returns for the period between January 1982 and March 2011, a period which includes the current liquidity crisis, so as to examine the relationship between default risk, liquidity crises and value and size premiums. The findings indicate that the default premium has explanatory power for value and size premiums, which affect firms with different characteristics. We also find that liquidity crises may actually increase the risks related to size and value premium strategies.     

Conditions for a CAPM equilibrium with positive prices

This paper examines the conditions required to guarantee positive prices in the CAPM. Positive prices imply an upper bound on the equity premium. This upper bound depends on the degree of diversity of firms’ fundamentals, and it is independent of investors’ preferences. In economies with realistically diverse assets the only positive-price CAPM equilibrium theoretically possible is a degenerate one, with zero equity premium. Furthermore, when specific standard investors’ preferences are assumed, the CAPM equilibrium with positive prices may be altogether impossible. A possible solution to these fundamental problems may be offered by the segmented-market version of the model.