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Option-implied probability distributions and currency excess returns
This paper describes a method of extracting the risk-neutral probability distribution of future exchange rates from option prices. In foreign exchange markets interbank option pricing conventions make possible reliable inferences about risk-neutral probability distributions with relatively little data. Moments drawn from risk-neutral exchange rate distribution are used to explore several issues related to the puzzle of excess returns in currency markets. Tests of the international capital asset pricing model using risk-neutral moments as explanatory variables indicate that option-based ...
Working Paper
Ambiguity in asset pricing and portfolio choice: a review of the literature
A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that investors? behavior is not well described by the traditional paradigm of (subjective) expected utility maximization under rational expectations. A literature has arisen that models agents whose choices are consistent with models that are less restrictive than the standard subjective expected utility framework. In this paper we conduct a survey of the existing literature that has explored the implications of decision-making under ambiguity for financial market outcomes, such as portfolio choice and equilibrium asset prices. We conclude that ...
Working Paper
Information diffusion based explanations of asset pricing anomalies
In this paper we develop information based factors which outperform other popular factors used in the multifactor pricing literature such as the Fama and French size and book-to-market factors. The first factor is based on the age of an asset, measured by the number of months since the asset?s IPO, while the second factor is based on the percentage of trading days an asset does not trade in a given year. Both factors attempt to capture the quality and speed of information diffusion on the market. Our information factors perform particularly well on momentum portfolios, which, Hong et al ...
Working Paper
Solving an empirical puzzle in the capital asset pricing model
A long standing puzzle in the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) has been the inability of empirical work to validate it. This paper presents a new approach to estimating the CAPM, taking into account the differences between observable and expected returns for risky assets and for the market portfolio of all traded assets, as well as inherent nonlinearities and the effects of excluded variables. Using this approach, we provide evidence that the relation between the observable returns on stock and market portfolios is nonlinear.
Report
The conditional CAPM and the cross-section of expected returns
Most empirical studies of the static CAPM assume that betas remain constant over time and that the return on the value-weighted portfolio of all stocks is a proxy for the return on aggregate wealth. The general consensus is that the static CAPM is unable to explain satisfactorily the cross-section of average returns on stocks. We assume that the CAPM holds in a conditional sense, i.e., betas and the market risk premium vary over time. We include the return on human capital when measuring the return on aggregate wealth. Our specification performs well in explaining the cross-section of average ...
Working Paper
A time-varying threshold STAR model of unemployment and the natural rate
Smooth-transition autoregressive (STAR) models have proven to be worthy competitors of Markov-switching models of regime shifts, but the assumption of a time-invariant threshold level does not seem realistic and it holds back this class of models from reaching their potential usefulness. Indeed, an estimate of a time-varying threshold level of unemployment, for example, might serve as a meaningful estimate of the natural rate of unemployment. More precisely, within a STAR framework, one might call the time-varying threshold the ?tipping level? rate of unemployment, at which the mean and ...
Working Paper
A quantile regression analysis of the cross section of stock market returns
Traditional methods of testing the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) do so at the mean of the conditional distribution. Instead, we test whether the conditional CAPM holds at other points of the distribution by utilizing the technique of quantile regression (Koenker and Bassett 1978, Buchinsky 1998). This method allows us to model the performance of firms or portfolios that underperform or overperform in the sense that the conditional mean under- or overpredicts the return of the portfolio; we interpret firms that fall in the lower (upper) quantiles as having received bad (good) news during ...
Working Paper
The human capital that matters: expected returns and the income of affluent households
We implement the human capital CAPM (HCAPM) using the income growth of high income households, rather than aggregate income growth, to proxy the return to human capital (HCRT). We find that identifying the HCRT with the income growth of affluent households, those who are most likely to hold stocks, substantially improves the performance of the HCAPM. Specifically, the pricing errors, R-square?s, average returns on factor mimicking portfolios, and performance relative to other macro-finance models uniformly improve as the HCRT is identified with the income growth of successively more affluent ...
Journal Article
Portfolio advice of a multifactor world
How does traditional portfolio theory adapt to the new facts? The old "two-fund" theorem becomes a "many-fund" theorem; some investors can improve returns by investing in portfolio strategies that let them take on nonmarket sources of risk; and other investors can shed nonmarket risks in the same way. Investors can, if willing to take on risks, improve returns by some modest market timing. However, the average investor must always hold the market, so only investors who are different from average can benefit from holding new and unusual portfolios