Asset Pricing Anomalies and the State Ownership Effect in China's Domestic Stock Market

In China, a large proportion of companies are state owned, and this factor is a likely important driver of assets prices. In this paper, a State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) benchmark/factor is constructed along with the market factor and common benchmarks used in the literature to explain returns – Value, Size, and Momentum. Testing various models using two stage Fama & MacBeth (1973) regressions, we show that the SOE factor is critical in explaining cross section returns in China's domestic stock market. The explanatory power of the multi-factor model improves after adjusting common factors such as value, size and momentum for the SOE impact. We suggest that the SOE risk factor captures specific characteristics of the asset pricing mechanism in China. While accounting for the SOE impact improves explanatory power of the asset pricing model, further market specific factors may be relevant in China